Just hours before a midnight deadline that could bring a partial government shutdown, President Donald Trump called Republican senators to the White House Friday to rally them in a renewed fight for his proposed border wall.
Earlier Friday, the president threatened a government shutdown in morning tweets, pushing hard for the Senate to pass $5 billion for his border wall as the House did Thursday.
Although Trump last week said he would be “proud” to own a government shutdown over border security, he tried Friday to shift the blame to Democrats after they said they would block any money for a border wall.
“The Democrats now own the shutdown!” Trump tweeted mid-morning, the latest in a series of almost a dozen tweets Friday.
The House bill sent to the Senate includes $5.7 billion to construct a border wall, $7.8 billion for disaster relief and would fund the government until Feb. 8.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was ready to respond.
“You own the shutdown—your own words,” Schumer tweeted. “The Senate UNANIMOUSLY passed a bipartisan solution to avoid a shutdown. Then you threw another temper tantrum and convinced the House to ignore that compromise.”
In earlier tweets Friday, Trump called for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to wage a “hard” fight, saying the wall was the only way to secure the border.
The president called for McConnell to use the “nuclear option,” which would override Senate rules that require 60 votes to stop a filibuster and instead would allow a vote to proceed and a measure to pass with just 51 votes or a simple majority.
“Mitch, use the Nuclear Option and get it done!” Trump tweeted.
McConnell has repeatedly refused to use the “nuclear option” and a spokesman told ABC News Friday there were not enough votes to pursue it.
Trump also said Democrats have called his wall proposal “old fashioned” but tweeted he knows technology “better than anyone.”
“The fact is there is nothing else’s that will work, and that has been true for thousands of years,” Trump said in a series of at least eight tweets.
If a government shutdown comes to fruition on Friday, it would look a little different from past instances, mostly because Congress has already funded about 75 percent of the federal government. But even a partial government shutdown could impact hundreds of thousands of federal employees.
ABC News’ John Parkinson contributed to this report.
