• The commonly circulated quote "A shutdown means the president is weak" attributed to Donald Trump from 2013 is a mixture of true and false information¹.
• Fact-checkers found no evidence that Trump said the complete quote in its entirety, including the specific sentence "A shutdown means the president is weak"¹².
• However, Trump did say verbatim during a 2013 interview: "I mean, problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top"¹.
• The remainder of the alleged quote fairly reflected Trump's publicly stated thoughts in 2013, where he placed responsibility for government shutdowns on the president and criticized leadership²¹.
• The earliest-known posts containing the first and third sentences of the purported quote (including the "president is weak" line) date to January 2018, not 2013, suggesting those words may have been fabricated or paraphrased by others later¹.
• PolitiFact rated the overall claim "Half True" because while the exact wording was not found, Trump made similar statements about presidential leadership during shutdowns².

Overall validity: 50%

1. Trump once said, 'A government shutdown falls on president's lack of leadership' and spoke about 'weak' presidents? | Snopes.com
2. PolitiFact | Before he was president, did Donald Trump say a government shutdown shows a president is weak?