Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) on Tuesday accused President Donald Trump of being a “hostage taker” amid the partial government shutdown over border security wall funding.
Hirono said she is now looking to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to present a compromising bill to the Senate because Trump is so “locked into his position” that is holding “over 800,000 people hostage.”
“[W]e can end this shutdown right now if Mitch McConnell will bring the House-passed bills to the floor because those bills represent a compromise already — bills that the Senate also passed last year,” Hirono explained on CNN’s “New Day.” “So, we could end the shutdown right now if Mitch McConnell would do the job as the leader of an independent branch of government and pass those bills and end this shutdown.”
She continued, “It is Mitch McConnell who I am looking to because the president is so locked into his position and as I said, he’s a hostage taker. He’s taken over 800,000 people hostage. … His word is not good because he’s supposed to be okaying the ‘don’t shut the government down’ bills that the Senate passed and which the House, we thought, was going to pass it. At the last minute, watching Fox News apparently, I don’t know who’s running this country, but all of a sudden he changed his mind. So, any kind of meetings with the president, he can say one thing, and then hours later, you know, I call it the Tuesday/Thursday Trump, on Tuesday he will tell you everything that’s great and by Thursday, it’s all off the table.”
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