Although the federal government reopened recently, it’s heading towards another possible showdown on February 15 when currently approved funding will run out while President Donald Trump maintains his demands for billions for a border wall. In an interview to be broadcast this weekend, he pinned a whole host of problems on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who’s repeatedly rebuffed that push for billions for a wall that ignores a whole host of issues.
After reporter Margaret Brennan asked him what he’d learned about negotiating with Pelosi during the recent shutdown, Trump ranted:
‘I think she is very bad for our country… She wanted to win a political point. I happen to think it’s very bad politics because basically she wants open borders. She doesn’t mind human trafficking or she wouldn’t do this… She’s costing the country hundreds of billions of dollars because what’s happening is when you have a porous border, and when you have drugs pouring in, and when you have people dying all over the country because of people like Pelosi who don’t want to give proper border security for political reasons — she’s doing a terrible disservice to our country.’
Watch below.
In other words, Trump didn’t make any process towards actual negotiating prowess — he’s just still spouting off his familiar lies.
To be clear — no, neither Pelosi nor the Democratic Party at large want open borders or don’t mind human trafficking. They have presented very specific, funded proposals to beef up security at the border through means like scanning technology to use on vehicles that go through ports of entry. The vast majority of those drugs he mentions come smuggled through those legal ports of entry, not sneaked through the bushes by a Mexican with a bag over one shoulder and a weapon over the other, as Trump might suggest.
Those drugs are the only border-associated support that could be used for Trump’s claim of people dying “all over the country.” There is no secret invasion of criminals happening via asylum seekers who arrive at the southern border, no matter how many times Trump makes that exact claim.
He’s yet again approached laughably ridiculous status thanks to his assertion that like some kind of comic book villain, Pelosi is personally responsible for crime and deaths all over the country because she dares oppose the oh-so-great Donald Trump. That’s what we’re working with here.
In another feat of egotistical thinking, Trump has consistently presented his proposal for a border wall as the only viable option, claiming that without a wall, there’s no path to security for the United States. To that end, even after the recent shutdown concluded, he has maintained his threat to declare a national emergency in an effort to use executive power to get his wall built.
That would no doubt run into a mountain of legal challenges, but the White House has been preparing for the option anyway, including via identifying some $7 billion that could be redirected for wall construction, mostly from the Defense Department. This past week, Trump suggested he’d be making a big announcement about his border security plans in his State of the Union address this coming Tuesday.
Featured Image via screenshot from the video
