Some Republican presidential candidates on Wednesday used Donald Trump’s absence at a primary debate to criticize him for adding billions to the national debt.
The GOP candidates also pointed blame at President Joe Biden — saying he has been reckless with federal spending — for what increasingly appears to be a likely government shutdown during a televised debate that featured seven 2024 hopefuls. Primary front-runner Trump, who skipped the debate to instead address autoworkers in the swing state of Michigan, has encouraged a group of House conservatives to go for broke and not pass a temporary spending bill to keep the government operating past Saturday.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said this when asked who would be to blame if the government shuts down this weekend: “Everybody who’s in Washington, D.C. — they get sent down there to do the job and they’ve been failing.”
