President Donald Trump is known for attacking, assailing, insulting and mocking his political enemies on his favorite social media platform. However, if his reaction to right-wing pundit Ann Coulter's recent criticisms of his job performance is any indication, it appears that the famously thin-skinned president does not like when the mirror is turned on him.
According to the @TrumpsAlert Twitter account, which tracks Trump family activity on the social media platform, the president either unfollowed or possibly blocked Coulter, who was an ardent Trump supporter in 2016. Trump's petty response came after Coulter on Wednesday called him "gutless" in a blog post, and told The Daily Caller that she will not vote for the president's reelection in 2020 if he cannot secure funding for his long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
In her interview with the Daily Caller, Coulter criticized the president's apparent softening stance on securing the funds he claims are necessary to build the wall and declared Trump will have "no legacy whatsoever" if he doesn't get it built.
"They're about to have a country where no Republican will ever be elected president again," Coulter said. "Trump will just have been a joke presidency who scammed the American people, amused the populists for a while. But he'll have no legacy whatsoever."
The White House this week appeared to pull back on Trump's shutdown threats. Last week, the president said he would be "proud" to shut down the government if Congress did not agree to fund his border wall and even told Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer that he would claim full responsibility. However, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday revealed that Trump had asked every federal agency to contribute to the $5 billion in border wall funding that he has requested from Congress.
"We are looking at existing funding through other agencies right now that we can draw on to do that immediately," Sanders said during the press briefing.
Trump and Congress must agree to a new government spending package by Dec. 21. If a compromise cannot be reached by then, large parts of the federal government will shutter. The Department of Defense, however, is funded through the end of next September.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday introduced a short-term spending bill to fund the government through Feb. 8, 2019, in an attempt to avert a partial government shutdown this week. In remarks on the Senate floor, McConnell said the measure, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, would "ensure continuous funding for the federal government" and "provide the resources necessary to continue normal operations through February the 8th."
If the short-term resolution is approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate, it would make its away to the president's desk for his signature and prevent a partial government shutdown when funding expires at midnight on Friday. For now, Congress remains in a race against the clock.
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