Trump now says he doesn’t want a government shutdown

Days after saying he would be “proud” to own a government shutdown over border security, President Trump on Thursday has tweeted out a video calling Democrats hypocrites — and saying he doesn’t want a shutdown after all.

“Let’s not do a shutdown, Democrats — do what’s right for the American People!” a caption on the video reads.

“The Democrats are absolute hypocrites. All along they’ve been supporting walls, and supporting fences and supporting all sorts of border security,” says Trump, pictured standing on the White House lawn.

The one-minute, 16-second video then cuts to three brief, undated clips of Sen. Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton and then-Sen. Barack Obama talking about border security.

“Illegal immigration is wrong, plain and simple,” Schumer says.

“I voted numerous times, when I was a senator, to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in,” Clinton says.

“We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States, undetected, undocumented, unchecked,” Obama says before the camera returns to Trump, who then accuses Democrats of opposing his funding requests for the wall on personal animus.

“The fact is they’ve always supported fences and walls and partitions. But you know what? They only don’t want to do it because of me. They have to put the people ahead of politics,” he says, as brief clips are shown of a chaotic scene, apparently on the Mexican side of the US border as migrants try to cross.

“We need to have the wall. We need border security. Whatever it takes to get border security, I will do it. I pledged that a long time ago, and I will pledge it always,” Trump continues.

“We’ve done a really fantastic job with what we have. We can do an almost perfect job if we have the wall and proper border security, and that’s what we’re going to do for the American people. Thank you.”

The GOP-controlled House has not voted on a spending bill that would include $5 billion Trump has sought, and analysts believe it’s because Republicans aren’t sure they have the votes to pass it.

The bill would likely die in the Senate anyway, as Trump would need 60 votes to avoid a filibuster.

Trump on Tuesday said he would be happy to take the blame for a government shutdown if Congress can’t pass a spending bill that included his wall funding by the Dec. 21 deadline.

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