President Trump on Wednesday again threatened to shut down the government at the end of the month, days after indicating that he wanted to avoid such a move.
“If it happens it happens. If it’s about border security, I’m willing to do anything,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.
Trump was heading into a meeting to discuss spending with congressional leaders, who were hoping to dissuade Trump from considering a shutdown ahead of November’s midterm election.
{mosads}While Trump had threatened to shut down the government if Congress failed to adequately fund his proposed border wall earlier in the year, in recent days he had seemed to back off the threat.
“I don’t like the idea of shutdowns,” Trump said in a Tuesday interview with The Daily Caller published earlier Wednesday.
“I don’t see even myself or anybody else closing down the country right now,” he added.
Trump’s comments came just hours after his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, trekked to Capitol Hill and personally assured lawmakers in the conservative Republican Study Committee that Trump did not want to shut down the government, according to sources in the room.
Mulvaney also told his former House colleagues that he advised Trump that a shutdown would be a bad idea.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told a press conference earlier in the day that a shutdown was “not in anyone’s interest, and he knows that.”
Congress is working on passing a series of funding packages for the new fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. But to avoid a showdown over the border wall, Congress is planning a continuing resolution for the bill that deals with border security, which would maintain current funding levels until after the election.
Trump could force parts of the government to shut down in October if he vetoes the funding bills.