Claim:
In 2013, then-businessman and reality TV host Donald Trump said: “A government shutdown falls on the president’s lack of leadership. I mean, problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top. A shutdown means the president is weak.”
Rating:
What’s True
Trump truly once said the exact words in the second sentence of the quote.
What’s False
No record existed of Trump saying the exact words in the first or third sentences. However, his other remarks from that period of time aligned with the same thoughts.
During the U.S. government shutdown in 2025, people claimed that, in 2013, then-businessman and reality TV host Donald Trump said: “A government shutdown falls on the president’s lack of leadership. I mean, problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top. A shutdown means the president is weak.”
Users shared posts with the quote, claiming Trump — who was president during the 2025 shutdown — made the comment days before a government shutdown during then-President Barack Obama’s second term in October 2013.
In a primary example, on Sept. 30, the anti-Trump (archived) Occupy Democrats Facebook page posted a meme (archived) featuring the quote. The group shared the meme elsewhere on X and Instagram, with captions reading: “This Trump quote aged beautifully… and for once, we agree with him!” Snopes readers also searched for the claim on our site.
(Occupy Democrats/Facebook)
Many other users shared the same meme, or similar ones, or reposted the alleged quote’s text on Bluesky (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived) and X (archived).
Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo uncovered no record of Trump producing the verbatim remark about government shutdowns. Only the second sentence reflected an exact quote. However, looking at Trump’s comments from 2013 — which he made on TV and on X (then Twitter) — revealed that the remainder of the alleged quote was a fair paraphrase of his publicly stated thoughts.
Therefore, the quote in the memes is a mixture of true and false information.
Those same online searches located one of the earliest-known posts (archived) containing the first and third sentences of the purported quote from Jan. 20, 2018, during another government shutdown that occurred during Trump’s first term — indicating those words originated around the same time.
A White House spokesperson responded to our email about the quote but did not answer our questions. We also contacted Occupy Democrats by email to ask about their post and their alleged exact quote and will update this article if we receive further information.
Trump’s 2013 ‘Fox & Friends’ interview
On Sept. 30, 2013, Trump appeared on the Fox News morning TV show “Fox & Friends.” At the time, Obama was serving as president, Republicans controlled the House and Democrats held the majority in the Senate. For years, a 29-second clip from the interview spread online:
During the discussion, “Fox & Friends” co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked Trump, “Who’s getting fired, who’s going to bear the brunt of the responsibility if indeed there is a shutdown of our government?” He replied by mentioning the importance of leading and exhibiting “strength” — the opposite of weakness (the in-question quote featured the word “weak”):
It always has to be the top. I mean, problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top. And the president’s the leader and he’s got to get everybody in a room and he’s got to lead. And he doesn’t do that. He doesn’t like doing that. That’s not his strength.
As shown, he also produced the exact words from the second sentence of the in-question quote: “I mean, problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top.”
Another version of the clip appeared on the Internet Archive’s TV News Archive website.
In the longer video of the interview, Trump said a compromise to avoid a shutdown in 2013 would “look like a failure to the Democrats,” who, again, controlled the White House and the Senate at the time. In the October 2025 shutdown, the Republicans controlled the White House, Senate and the House. Trump and the White House repeatedly blamed the 2025 shutdown on the Democrats (archived, archived, archived).
Trump also said in the 2013 interview that he believed people in future decades and centuries, during their discussions about past government shutdowns, would remember only the presidential administration in power at the time and would not recall leaders in Congress:
You know, the interesting thing is, in 25 years, in 50 years and 100 years from now, when the government is, you know when they talk about the government shutdown, they’re going to be talking about the president of the United States, “Who was the president at that time?” They’re not going to be talking who the head of the House was, the head of the Senate, who’s running things in Washington. They’re going to be talking about, “During the Obama administration, it was a disaster.”
2011 ‘Today’ interview
On April 7, 2011 — one day before elected officials struck an eleventh-hour budget deal to head off another potential government shutdown (archived, archived) — NBC’s “Today” show aired a segment featuring co-host Meredith Vieira interviewing Trump. NBC recorded the interview on April 6.
During the video-recorded interview, Trump said of government shutdowns: “It’s not really shutting down the government. It’s cutting costs. The kind of money that you’re talking about is peanuts.”
He then said he thought “the president [Obama at the time] would be blamed,” adding: “If there is a shutdown, I think it would be a tremendously negative mark on the president of the United States. He’s the one that has to get people together.”
Vieira then asked Trump how he would respond if he were in the Oval Office. He responded: “I would get everybody together and we’d have a budget.” Vieira replied, referencing Obama and congressional leaders: “They’ve all gotten together.” Trump retorted: “Well, that’s because they don’t have the right leader. You don’t have the right leader.”
Relevant Trump tweets from the past
Ahead of the 2013 shutdown, Trump tweeted a message blaming it on Obama (archived), writing: “FACT – the reason why Americans have to worry about a government shutdown is because Obama refuses to pass a budget.”
On Oct. 1, the first day of the 2013 shutdown, Trump responded (archived), “True!” to a user who said “if you were in office this would of never happen.”
The next day, Trump posted (archived): “Stocks rose yesterday during the first day of government shutdown. Markets like being left alone for a day.”
Weeks later, on Nov. 8, Trump wrote (archived): “Leadership: Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.”
Trump also previously posted the word “weak” in reference to both Obama and, generally, leadership in Washington.
In sum, although no evidence was found of Trump saying, “A government shutdown falls on the president’s lack of leadership. I mean, problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top. A shutdown means the president is weak,” in its entirety, there was proof he produced the second sentence verbatim. Meanwhile, the rest of the quote, though not said word for word, did fairly reflect other comments he made in 2013.
For further reading, we previously reported on a different claim regarding a similar rumor about Trump truly blaming Obama for the 2013 shutdown. That article featured several additional Trump remarks made on the Fox News TV show, “On the Record w/ Greta Van Susteren.”
