Thursday, December 19, 2024
Jennifer Lawless, the Chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Virginia, says that the positive public opinion of President-elect Donald Trump could turn into a negative one quickly, if the government shuts down just days before Christmas.
“Well, my bet is that that perception is going to change Saturday morning at midnight, if there’s a government shutdown that was orchestrated pretty much by Elon Musk and Donald Trump 24 hours ago,” said Lawless.
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“It seemed that [the Trump transition team] was on a pretty steady clip to fill key appointments, that they were pretty unified and speaking with one voice in terms of the incoming administration’s new priorities and policies and that Donald Trump had functional and working relationships with Republicans in both chambers of Congress,” said Lawless. “So I think that’s why he was getting pretty decent ratings [when] it looked like he was entering Washington with an intention, obviously, to shake things up, and when I say shake things up, for some groups of people those would be devastating shakeups, but it seemed like there was a clear, coherent plan.”
Musk Factor
“24 hours ago, that changed when, after a very difficult bipartisan negotiation, Democrats and Republicans seemed to have reached an agreement to avert a government shutdown and continue to fund the government through March,” said Lawless.
“Elon Musk took to Twitter and sent more than a hundred messages bashing Republicans for being in support of this deal, and Donald Trump came out and said that under no circumstances should Republicans support it and they should not support a debt ceiling,” Lawless added.
“You don’t want a government shutdown during the holidays, and it’s unclear that there’s any sort of bipartisan will to avoid it at this point,” she said.
“There are too many Republicans who are already turned off by the bill and I should also note that several of the specifics that Elon Musk criticized and you know sort of bashed Congress for agreeing to and tried to rally public support around were complete lies,” said Lawless. “[Musk] said, for example, that Congress was issuing itself a 40% pay raise. It’s a 3.9% pay raise, and that’s capped right, so there are things like that that are just completely erroneous.”
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