Donald Trump on Sunday admitted, once again, that he is treating the ongoing government shutdown as a revenge tour against Democrats, boasting about impeding federal funds for a crucial transit route in the New York metropolitan area.
On day one of the shutdown, White House budget director Russell Vought announced that he would withhold funds for the Hudson Tunnel project, a plan to expand service along the country’s busiest rail route via new and improved rail tunnels connecting New York City and New Jersey.
Vought said the freeze was to ensure the funds were not used for diversity, equity, and inclusion purposes. But the president’s comments reveal “DEI” to have been a fig leaf, with the move actually meant to hurt Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat who has long pushed for the project.
Making this ulterior motive not-so-ulterior, Trump last week said: “The project in New York, it’s billions and billions of dollars that Schumer has worked 20 years to get. It’s terminated. Tell him it’s terminated.”
On Sunday, the president continued to make clear that he’s using the shutdown to exact revenge on Democrats, particularly vis-à-vis the Hudson Tunnel project.
“As of now, it’s terminated,” Trump said of the project while aboard Air Force One. “And that’s up to me. And as of now it’s terminated, and it’s terminated because the Democrats are so foolish, what they’ve done to the country.”
It’s a damning sound bite. While Trump’s intended target is clearly Schumer, the real victims of the move are the hundreds of thousands of rail riders who commute daily across the Hudson River—not to mention the millions more adversely impacted by other cuts Trump has made during the shutdown to programs that he claims Democrats “like.”
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