Sarah Huckabee Sanders scrambles to explain away Trump's pining for a government shutdown

Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
(Image credit: Screenshot/Twitter/ABCPolitics)

On Tuesday, President Trump said that he'd "love to see" a government shutdown at week's end if Democrats and Republicans fail to agree on immigration legislation. In an all-too-familiar scene, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was forced to address and retract that claim during a press briefing only a few hours later.

"We are not advocating for the shutdown," Sanders said after she was asked about her boss' remarks. She quickly pivoted to blaming the minority party in Congress: "[A shutdown would be] the fault of the Democrats not being willing to do their jobs."

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Kelly O'Meara Morales

Kelly O'Meara Morales is a staff writer at The Week. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and studied Middle Eastern history and nonfiction writing amongst other esoteric subjects. When not compulsively checking Twitter, he writes and records music, subsists on tacos, and watches basketball.