While Democrats and Republicans were busy pointing fingers and trading blame for the government shutdown, President Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump, celebrated a bit on Saturday, saying that furloughing workers and canceling services was good politically for his dad and his allies. “Honestly, I think it’s a good thing for us,” Eric Trump told Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro, saying it paints the “absolutely terrified” Democrats in a negative light.
“People see through it,” Eric Trump said. “I mean, people have seen a year that’s incredible. It’s been filled with nothing but the best for our country, ‘America First’ policies, and they’re happy with where we are as a nation … It has the Democrats worried.”
The 34-year-old said Democrats are actually pushing for the shutdown because they are hoping it’s going to take attention away from his father and his administration’s achievements. “The only reason they want to shutdown government is to distract and to stop his momentum,” he said. “I mean, my father has had incredible momentum.”
Trump’s third child said that Democrats want the shutdown to continue to make sure people don’t talk about how his father has “gotten more done in one year than arguably any president in history.”
“How do they divert from that message?” asked Eric Trump. “How do they save their own party when they don’t have any leadership, they don’t have any good candidates out there, they don’t have a message of their own? How do they do that? They obstruct, they distract, they try and place blame.”
Polls suggest Eric Trump may not be quite right in how he’s reading the situation. A CNN poll released Friday found that while 31 percent would blame Democrats for a shutdown, 21 percent said they would fault Trump while 26 percent said congressional Republicans would be to blame. Around 10 percent of respondents said they would blame all three.
President Trump plugged his son’s interview on Twitter and later retweeted a Fox News tweet that included video of the exchange with Trump super fan Pirro.
