© Secret Service officer maintains a watch on the 22nd day of a partial government shutdown at the White House in Washington. Reuters/Joshua RobertsSecret Service officer maintains a watch on the 22nd day of a partial government shutdown at the White House in Washington.
The president's anger was provoked by what he described as "a fake reporter from the Amazon Washington Post," who claimed that the White House was "chaotic" and lacked any plan for the shutdown.
He denied this allegation and insisted that the White House couldn't be in chaos due to the fact that "there's almost nobody in the W.H. but me, and I do have a plan on the Shutdown."
Trump reminded that building a wall on the Mexican border was one of his main campaign promises. He said that the ball was in the court of his political opponents, warning that "we will be out for a long time unless the Democrats come back from their 'vacations' and get back to work."
The shutdown began on December 22, after Senate Democrats refused to vote on the appropriations bill giving $5.6 billion towards the construction of a barrier on the US-Mexico border that was approved by the Republican-majority House of Representatives. Democrats took over the House on January 3, and refuse to include money for the wall in the funding bills.
Neither of the sides seem willing to budge, yet Trump is also unwilling to resort to declaring a national emergency and use the Pentagon slush fund to build the wall. Some 800,000 federal workers have been affected by the ongoing partial shutdown, missing their paycheck on Friday.
The president didn't elaborate on the reporter or the news program he had in mind while tweeting, but Washington Post's Philip Rucker identified himself as Trump's target.
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