President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that federal workers have told him that they support the ongoing government shutdown if it means funding for his border wall.
Twitter erupted.
“They understand what’s happening. They want border security,” Trump told reporters Tuesday morning (watch the video above). “Many of those workers have said to me and communicated, ‘Stay out until you get the funding for the wall.’ These federal workers want the wall.”
Hundreds of thousands of federal employees have stopped working since nine federal departments and dozens of agencies shut down Saturday after Trump refused to sign a spending bill that didn’t include money for his border wall.
Many responding to Trump’s claim were skeptical about the existence of his border-supporting “federal workers.” Former New York U.S. attorney Preet Bharara joked on Twitter that the people Trump was referring to were the same 114-year-old parents of Korean War vets he claimed last summer that he had talked to before meeting with Kim Jong Un. Trump said then that “thousands and thousands” of parents of vets from the Korean War that ended 65 years ago had reached out to him to press for the return of remains.
That got the ball rolling. One comment quipped that slavery fighter Frederick Douglass also wants the wall. Trump last year said that Douglass, who died in 1895, “has done an amazing job.”
Some responding to Bharara’s comment referred to the Twitter hashtag “shutdown stories” revealing the financial crunch facing federal workers, like these: