Fact check: What did Trump say exactly about government shutdowns in 2013?

Executive summary — Short answer upfront: Donald Trump publicly said before he was president that a government shutdown would be “a tremendously negative mark on the president of the United States” and that the president “has to get people together” to avoid it, remarks attributed to interviews reported in 2011 and cited in later fact-check coverage. Contemporary reporting contrasts those earlier statements with his later public messaging that places primary blame for shutdowns on Democrats, showing a notable shift in how responsibility is framed ^{[1] [2]}. A separate 2013 remark about offering to pay for White House tours is related but not a direct shutdown policy statement ^[3].

1. What he said that put the onus on the president — and where it was reported

The core claim widely cited in recent fact-check pieces is that Trump told interviewers a shutdown would reflect poorly on the sitting president and that leadership responsibility rests with the White House. Coverage summarized this quote as saying a shutdown would be a “tremendously negative mark on the president of the United States” and that the president “has to get people together,” language reported in retrospectives published in October 2025 which reference earlier remarks ^{[1] [2]}. These October 2025 articles explicitly frame the earlier remarks as inconsistent with later public statements casting blame elsewhere, and they treat the remark as a clear attribution of responsibility to the president.

2. Timing and sourcing — when the remark was made and how it resurfaced

The analyses note the original comments predate Trump’s presidency, with primary citations pointing to interviews in 2011 and a referenced 2013 conversation on Fox & Friends in which he reiterated the point that attention during a shutdown would focus on the president, not congressional leaders ^{[1] [2]}. The October 2025 articles republished or summarized those earlier remarks to highlight contrast with later rhetoric. A 2013 mention exists in the record about Trump offering to pay for White House tours during the sequester, but that comment concerned tours and the sequester specifically rather than laying out a general rule on shutdown responsibility ^[3].

3. How recent reporting frames a change in stance — contrast between 2011/2013 and later messaging

Multiple recent analyses interpret the earlier quote as contradictory to Trump’s post-2016 public messaging that frequently blames Democrats for shutdowns. The fact-check pieces published in October 2025 explicitly state that the 2011/2013 remarks “contrast with his current stance, where he blames Democrats” and use that contrast to argue a shift in how he assigns responsibility for funding standoffs ^{[1] [2]}. The October 2025 articles present the earlier quote as direct and unequivocal in assigning political accountability to the president, while describing later statements as shifting blame toward other actors.

4. What the record does not show — limits and omissions in the cited materials

The materials provided do not include a verbatim primary-source transcript dated precisely from 2013 that contains the full quote; rather, they cite interviews from 2011 and reference a 2013 Fox & Friends phone interview as reiteration. One supplied item is explicitly irrelevant to the shutdown quote and instead concerns a separate offer by Trump to fund White House tours during a sequester ^{[3] [4]}. Recent summaries therefore rely on journalistic reporting and retrospectives rather than presenting newly uncovered original audio or full transcripts from 2013, leaving a gap between paraphrase and primary-source verification ^{[1] [2]}.

5. Multiple viewpoints — how different narratives use the same lines

The October 2025 pieces present the earlier quotes as evidence of inconsistency, and that framing serves a fact-checking purpose by juxtaposing the past claim that the president carries blame with present-day rhetoric blaming Democrats ^{[1] [2]}. Supporters or sympathetic outlets could argue that context matters — that the circumstances of specific shutdown threats differ and political strategy shapes public attributions — but the supplied analyses do not provide those counter-contextual quotes. The record in these summaries therefore shows a clear narrative purpose in highlighting the change in emphasis over time ^{[1] [2]}.

6. What to take away — verified, contested, and missing elements

Verified by the supplied analyses is that Trump previously stated responsibility would fall on the president and used language like “tremendously negative mark” and that he emphasized the president’s role in getting parties together to avoid shutdowns ^{[1] [2]}. Contested or less-certain elements include the precise dating and verbatim wording from 2013 specifically, since the available items center on 2011 remarks and a 2013 Fox appearance referenced in secondary reporting, while a 2013 quote about paying for tours is tangential ^{[3] [4]}. The pieces published in October 2025 uniformly frame the earlier quotes as inconsistent with later blame assignments ^{[1] [2]}.

7. Bottom line for readers seeking original wording or context

If you need the exact, timestamped primary-source quote from 2013, that specific transcript or audio is not provided among these analyses; the available fact-checking articles from October 2025 reproduce and interpret earlier statements and cite a 2011 remark as the clearest articulation that a shutdown would be a political black mark on the president ^{[1] [2]}. The 2013 White House-tour comment appears in the contemporaneous record but addresses a different issue. For definitive primary-source verification, consult archived interview video or transcripts from the cited 2011/2013 appearances referenced in the October 2025 coverage ^{[1] [2] [3]}.