President Donald Trump extended an open invite for Democrats to negotiate a deal on a temporary funding bill to avert a government shutdown before the Friday night deadline.
Trump made the remarks in the Oval Office on Thursday under questioning by Pennsylvania-based radio show host and publisher of The Virginia Star John Fredericks.
“If [the Democrats] need me, I’m there 100 percent,” the president said.
Trump was optimistic that enough Democrats will ultimately vote in favor of the continuing resolution that passed the U.S. House on Tuesday to fund the government until September, however, noted that if the funding bill fails, “it’s not the Republicans’ fault.”
“If it shuts down, it’s not the Republicans’ fault. We passed a bill where we had an incredible Republican vote. We only had one negative vote, a grandstander, one grandstander, there’s always a grandstander in the lot. But it was amazing. People were amazed that the Republicans were able to vote in unison like that, so strongly,” Trump said.
“If there’s a shutdown, even the Democrats admit it’ll be their fault. I’m hearing a lot of Democrats are going to vote for it, and I hope they do,” Trump added.
Trump went on to express his ultimate desire for Congress to begin working on implementing his agenda through a “big beautiful bill” after passing the continuing resolution,
“Ultimately, we want to vote for one big, beautiful bill where we put the taxes and we put everything and we’re going to have big tax cuts. We’re going to have tremendous incentives for companies coming into our country and employing lots of people. I called it, in a rare moment, one big, beautiful bill. That’s what I like, and it seems to be where they’re heading,” Trump said.
The president further extended an offer of bipartisanship while discussing his vision for the “big beautiful bill,” specifically his desire for Congress to fund Los Angeles’ efforts to recover from January’s devastating wildfires.
“We’ll have to take care of something to do with Los Angeles…Los Angeles almost burned to the ground…They lost 25,000 houses…They used to have plenty of water, but they turned it off for environmental reasons – I turned it on for environmental reasons and also fire reasons…The fire hydrants would have been loaded, the sprinklers in people’s living rooms and bedrooms would have been loaded up with water,” Trump explained.
“So the water is flowing and we’re going to have to give a lot of money to Los Angeles to help them and the Democrats are going to want to do that…But in the meantime, we have the continuing resolution and the Republicans have approved it and now the Democrats have to approve it. I hope they will,” Trump added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
