The ongoing partial government shutdown that’s temporarily claimed the jobs and paychecks of hundreds of thousands of government workers is President Donald Trump’s doing. Yet, this Saturday, he will be addressing the nation from the White House, acting as if he can be trusted to lead the United States out of the shutdown. An anonymous White House official told CNN ahead of time that he would not be declaring a national emergency in his speech, but he would be instead offering a “third” option to Democrats to get them back to the negotiating table.
Negotiations have at this point stalled because Trump has refused to approve any further funding without over $5 billion for a border wall blocking off Mexico. Democrats have balked at that proposal, especially considering facts like that undocumented border crossings continue their overall downward historical trend without Trump’s wall and there’s little to no evidence to support his claims of undocumented immigration over the southern border posing a special threat to the United States. For instance, he State Department itself has asserted there’s no evidence terror groups have utilized Mexico and its border with the U.S. for access to the country.
Still, Trump hasn’t relented in his political games. As of a couple of days ago, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) hadn’t even heard from the president since he’d stormed out of a meeting including the two of them the week prior.
However, now the forever attention-hungry president will be offering a live video address to put something on the table for Democrats that apparently won’t include backing down from his wall funding demands at all instead of getting to the negotiating table and acting at least somewhat open to compromise.
He has previously floated the idea of declaring a national emergency in an effort to use the executive power that would grant him to get his long sought wall built. It’s ironic that thanks to the actual realities of the situation, Trump is able to take his sweet time questioning whether or not to make such a declaration, which no doubt wouldn’t be possible if there was actually an emergency.
The senior administration official speaking to CNN about his speech revealed that discussions over whether or not to declare a national emergency are ongoing inside the White House. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders similarly left the door open for an emergency declaration when pressed, offering:
‘I’m not going to get ahead of the President but I can assure he’s going to continue fighting for border security, he’s going to continue looking for the solution to end the humanitarian and national security crisis at the border.’
Meanwhile down in reality, the real crisis continues to compound as hundreds of thousands of government workers go without pay and many Americans suffer thanks to the services those workers handle remaining unprovided. Affected staffers range from food inspectors to air traffic controllers to national park rangers, many of whom have been left unable to handle basic expenses, as emerging stories have made clear.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
