Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe referred to the president as an “angry, emotional, unstable man.” | AP Photo Elections McAuliffe says Democrats shouldn’t ‘give an inch’

“Democrats should not give an inch,” former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said Sunday when asked about the resolution of the partial government shutdown.

Referring to President Donald Trump as the “angry, emotional, unstable man sitting in the White House,” McAuliffe told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” that Trump and his fellow Republicans are fully to blame for the shutdown — and that everybody knows the border wall at the crux of the shutdown dispute won’t be built.


“Donald Trump owns this, he said he wanted to own it in the December meeting in the Oval Office,” McAuliffe said, referring to a televised meeting that Trump held with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“Maybe,” McAuliffe said, “we can get to a place where we can have immigration reform tied together with border security. And that's what we ought to do moving forward.”

McAuliffe, whose home state of Virginia stands to be one of the hardest hit by the shutdown since it is where so many government workers reside, has long been a vociferous critic of Trump.

In an interview rife with a variety of insults lobbed at the president — McAuliffe called Trump’s Twitter response to the death of child migrants in U.S. custody "the lowest act I have ever seen” — Bash repeatedly told McAuliffe he sounded like a 2020 presidential candidate and asked him whether he would declare his candidacy here and now.

“I’m obviously looking at it,” said McAuliffe in declining to take the opportunity Bash gave him, before saying voters want “results.”

“They don‘t want an angry liar in the White House,” he said.