Trump Again Threatens to Shut Down the Government Over Border Security
Trump Threatens Shutdown in Combative Advent With Democrats
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday transformed what was to be a private negotiating session with Democratic congressional leaders into a bitter televised altercation over his long-promised border wall, vowing to forcefulness a yr-end regime shutdown if they refused to fund his signature entrada hope.
During an extraordinary public airing of hostilities that underscored a new, more confrontational dynamic in Washington, Mr. Trump vowed to cake full funding for the regime if Democrats refused to allocate money for the wall on the southwestern border, saying he was "proud to shut downwards the authorities for border security."
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leaders, seated on couches flanking Mr. Trump in the Oval Role, took issue with the president's position and his imitation assertions most the wall in front of a phalanx of news cameras, imploring him repeatedly to continue the tense chat without reporters present. But Mr. Trump insisted on a conspicuous clash that undercut Republican congressional leaders and his own staff working to avert a shutdown at all costs, or at least to ensure that Democrats would shoulder the blame for such a event.
"If we don't have border security, we'll shut down the government — this country needs border security," Mr. Trump declared equally the testy back and forth unfolded, and Mr. Schumer reminded the president repeatedly that he had chosen several times for a shutdown, appearing to goad him into taking responsibility.
"You lot desire to know something?" Mr. Trump finally said, exasperated. "I'll tell you what: I am proud to shut downwards the government for border security, Chuck."
"I will have the mantle," Mr. Trump went on. "I volition be the ane to shut it downward — I'k not going to arraign you for information technology."
The scene raised fresh questions virtually whether Mr. Trump and lawmakers could achieve understanding by a Dec. 21 deadline to keep much of the government open, appearing to harden diametrically opposed positions on the wall.
It too showcased the interplay of ii politicians playing to very different bases: Mr. Trump highly-seasoned to his core anti-immigration supporters and Ms. Pelosi, her party's nominee for House speaker, to the young liberal lawmakers she needs to keep in her camp ahead of a formal election side by side month that she must win to secure the gavel.
Aides say Mr. Trump respects what he sees as Ms. Pelosi's toughness in the political trenches, but he sought on Tuesday to undercut her position by raising questions most her chore security. "Nancy's in a state of affairs where it's not easy for her to talk right now," Mr. Trump said at one betoken, alluding to Ms. Pelosi's struggle to garner the votes to be elected speaker.
"Please don't characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory," Ms. Pelosi shot back. She also challenged the president'southward force within his own party, questioning his ability to get the wall funding he is demanding through the Republican-led Firm. When the president said he could win such a vote "in two seconds," Ms. Pelosi dared the president: "Then practise it."
Later at the Capitol, Ms. Pelosi spared little venom in privately describing the president's demeanor to a roomful of colleagues.
"This wall matter" of Mr. Trump's is "similar a manhood thing for him — as if manhood could ever be associated with him," Ms. Pelosi told fellow Democrats, co-ordinate to an aide present for the remarks who insisted on anonymity to relay parts of the meeting.
Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer too sparred with Mr. Trump about the financing of the wall, afterwards the president insisted that Mexico would pay for it through coin that would flow into the United States as function of a new North American merchandise agreement. The Democrats told Mr. Trump that that would never happen. Ms. Pelosi said she had told the president that any economic gains from the pact should go to American workers and businesses, non a border wall.
"Well, they're going to pay for it one manner or the other," Mr. Trump insisted, in Ms. Pelosi's retelling.
Outside the West Wing subsequently the meeting, Mr. Schumer said Mr. Trump had thrown a "temper tantrum" over the wall, later telling reporters, "Y'all heard the president: He wants a shutdown."
In a statement shortly afterwards, Mr. Schumer and Ms. Pelosi said information technology was up to Mr. Trump to avert the disaster he had promised, by embracing their proposals to substantially postpone the dispute for some other year, either by passing the six noncontroversial spending measures that are outstanding and extending homeland security funding for one year at current levels, or past passing ane-year extensions for all seven remaining bills.
The president "said he would call back nigh it," Mr. Schumer later told reporters.
Despite the public meltdown, Mr. Trump appeared to be open to a way out of the impasse. He called Ms. Pelosi hours subsequently the meeting, she said, and was even so reviewing the options that the Democrats had presented. Mr. Trump even went into a lofty speech during the Oval Office session, once reporters had departed, in which he mused about the potential for him to work alongside Democratic leaders in the new Congress to strike nifty deals.
Gesticulating grandly with Vice President Mike Pence looking on, Mr. Trump told Mr. Schumer and Ms. Pelosi that the new Congress could exist the "greatest Congress in the history of Congress," according to a person familiar with the discussion who described it on the status of anonymity because it was private. And the president assured them that if they could strike deals that could get through the Firm, he would hogtie Republican senators to dorsum them.
On Tuesday, though, such compromises were not in testify. Mr. Trump's burst left Republican congressional leaders in a tricky spot, publicly rejecting a shutdown that their president had promised.
"I hope that's not where nosotros end up," Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, told reporters. "It was a rather spirited meeting we all watched, just I'd still like to run across a smooth ending hither."
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said, "My experience has been that shutdowns don't help everyone."
Before, Mr. Pence — who saturday silently through the Oval Office meeting and afterwards traveled to the Capitol to cursory Republicans — drew laughter from a roomful of senators when he described the meeting as "memorable" and said, "There appears to be a disagreement."
The meeting — the get-go time in more than than a year that the pair the president likes to telephone call "Chuck and Nancy" traveled to the White House to negotiate with Mr. Trump — was to exist a private session. Only Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, later on said that Mr. Trump had been "grateful for the opportunity" to identify his disagreement with Democrats on display.
Mr. Trump appeared to taunt Mr. Schumer.
"Y'all don't want to shut down the government, Chuck," Mr. Trump told his fellow New Yorker, referring to a brief shutdown in January when Democrats insisted that protections for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children must be office of any funding measure. "The concluding fourth dimension you shut it down, you got killed."
Veteran legislators expressed outrage.
"This is the simply time I've seen anything every bit irresponsible equally a president who says he wants a authorities shutdown," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, who has served for more than 40 years.
[ Mr. Trump made misleading claims most the border wall before and after the coming together with Democrats. ]
The president has suggested, repeatedly, that a shutdown might be necessary to compel Democrats to consume $v billion in wall funding. Just on Tuesday before the coming together, he had appeared to back off slightly.
In a serial of forenoon tweets, he falsely stated that substantial sections of the "Great Wall" had already been completed, and he suggested that his administration could go on structure whether Democrats funded information technology or not.
That would exist illegal, only it suggested that he was looking for a mode to keep the regime funded past Dec. 21, fifty-fifty if Democrats balk at wall funding.
"People do not nevertheless realize how much of the Wall, including actually effective renovation, has already been congenital," Mr. Trump wrote in one of the tweets. "If the Democrats do not requite us the votes to secure our Country, the Military machine will build the remaining sections of the Wall. They know how important information technology is!"
Information technology was not articulate what Mr. Trump was referring to. American troops he dispatched to the edge on the eve of the midterm congressional elections as part of what the president called an effort to caput off a migrant "invasion" accept put upwardly concertina wire along existing fences and barriers, merely the assistants has all the same to spend much of the $1.3 billion Congress canonical for border security concluding year. Under restrictions put in place by Congress, none of that money can be used to construct a new, concrete wall of the sort the president has said is vital.
The president does not have the legal dominance to spend money appropriated for one purpose on another job, such as wall-building.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/us/politics/trump-border-wall-government-shutdown.html
0 Response to "Trump Again Threatens to Shut Down the Government Over Border Security"
Postar um comentário