President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump on Thursday tried to clean up remarks she made recently about the now-record-breaking partial government shutdown, which she said had inflicted “a little bit of pain” on 800,000 federal workers who hadn’t received their paychecks.
In an interview with Fox News’ Harris Faulkner Thursday, Trump called the reaction to her comments “a classic example” of “exactly what happens with the mainstream media.”
In the “entirety” of the four-minute interview on BOLD TV, Trump insisted, “I think it was very clear: I am incredibly empathetic toward anyone right now who is struggling without a paycheck.”
“My whole point was that the President is standing strong on his position because this is really about the future of our country,” she said.
While it’s true that Trump expressed sympathy in the interview for “the hundreds of thousands of government workers who still don’t have a paycheck,” the rest of her comments were clear, as well.
“It’s not fair to you [unpaid federal workers] and we all get that, but this is so much bigger than any one person,” Trump said. “It is a little bit of pain but it’s going to be for the future of our country, and their children and their grandchildren and generations after them will thank them for their sacrifice right now.”
She also asserted in the interview that President Trump needed to use the shutdown as leverage in order to secure wall funding: “He’s got no hand to play” without the shutdown, Lara Trump said, adding: “He’s got to use everything he has to his advantage, and this is what he has right now.”
Trump continued Thursday, to Fox News: “For the mainstream media to take one little blurb out of what I said, misconstrue it and misrepresent what I had to say, is completely unacceptable, and it’s why the President calls the media a lot of fake news these days.”
She added: “I have a lot of respect for anyone who is a government worker who has not been paid who is trying to make ends meet right now.”
Lara Trump blames "the mainstream media" for the negative coverage of her characterizing the shutdown as "a little bit of pain" for unpaid workers. pic.twitter.com/qhQysmY5ud
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) January 24, 2019
