Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) tells The Hill that he hopes a government shutdown won’t happen, despite President Trump saying in a tweet that he doubts a deal is possible to avoid one.

Rubio said “there’s no winners” in such a scenario.

Fellow Republican Senator David Perdue (Ga.), meanwhile, dismissed the president’s Tuesday morning tweet as a “posturing.”

ADVERTISEMENT

“This president does a lot of posturing when he is negotiating, he’s a master negotiator,” Perdue told The Hill.

But with Democratic leaders announcing that they would not attend a planned Tuesday afternoon meeting at the White House to discuss an end-of-year spending bill, it’s unclear how negotiations will proceed.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) agreed with his party’s leaders’ decision to skip the meeting.

“If you start off with someone saying, ‘I don’t think there’s a way not to avoid shutdown,’ then you are basically saying, ‘don’t come to a meeting unless you’re willing to give me what I want,’ ” Menendez said in an interview with The Hill.

“This is a check and balance … as such the president has to negotiate with Congress, just like previous presidents did,” the Capitol Hill veteran added.