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Trump Threatens to Close Border if Congress Won’t Fund Wall Trump Threatens to Close Border if Congress Won’t Fund Wall
(about 11 hours later)
WASHINGTON — On the seventh day of a partial government shutdown, President Trump threatened on Friday to close the southern border and cut off aid to Central America if Congress refuses to fund a wall. WASHINGTON — President Trump dug in on his demand for border wall funding as the partial government shutdown approached its first full week on Friday, threatening again to close the southern border and cut off aid to Central America if Congress continued to deny his administration the money.
“We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with,” Mr. Trump tweeted Friday. “Hard to believe there was a Congress & President who would approve!” “We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter. “Hard to believe there was a Congress & President who would approve!”
Mr. Trump escalated his threats as up to 800,000 government workers were left in limbo and with Congress not set to take up the issue again until after the new year. “At this point, it looks like we could be in for a very long-term shutdown,” Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina and a close ally of Mr. Trump’s, told CNN. With 800,000 federal employees left in limbo, Mr. Trump seemed to be embracing the stalled state of play. The White House sought to play up a divide between Democratic leaders, whose aides said it did not exist, and advisers said Mr. Trump was “surprisingly good” with missing a planned 16-day vacation at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida because of the shutdown.
Democrats stood firm against agreeing to funding for a border wall, according to a spokesman for Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California and the incoming House speaker. “Democrats are united against the President’s immoral, ineffective and expensive wall, the wall that he specifically promised that Mexico would pay for,” the spokesman, Drew Hammill, said in a statement. Mr. Hammill also noted that the White House has made no formal outreach to Ms. Pelosi since Dec. 11, when Ms. Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, met with the president at the White House. Democrats sought to project that Mr. Trump had no clear route to funding the government without capitulating. “He has two options: caving right now or caving later,” said Brian Fallon, a former spokesman for Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader. “They don’t want to cave right now, but they don’t have a path to get out of this bind if they hold on for two more weeks.”
Mr. Trump also reiterated his threat on Twitter on Friday to cut off aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador as punishment to countries he claimed “are doing nothing for the United States but taking our money.” Mr. Trump’s new chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, tried to paint the incoming House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, as responsible for the impasse by implying that the Senate minority leader, Mr. Schumer, was willing to negotiate but she was not. “My gut was that he was really interested in doing a deal and coming to some sort of compromise,” Mr. Mulvaney said Friday on “Fox & Friends,” describing a meeting between Mr. Schumer and Vice President Mike Pence last weekend to discuss border security funding. “But the more we’re hearing this week is that it’s Nancy Pelosi who is preventing that from happening.”
Migrants have been fleeing Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, choosing to join caravans and confront Mr. Trump’s threats to prevent them from crossing the border over the dangers of life at home. In their meeting, Mr. Mulvaney and Mr. Pence offered Democrats a deal that would have allocated $2.5 billion for border security, including new fencing, and $400 million for other immigration measures. But Mr. Schumer demurred, encouraging the vice president to accept the $1.3 billion that Republicans and Democrats in Congress had already agreed upon.
Mr. Trump has made threats to shut down the border completely before. Last month, Mr. Trump said he would close the border “permanently” if Mexico refused to send asylum seekers back to their native countries. Senior aides to both Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer dismissed Mr. Mulvaney’s suggestion that they were in disagreement. “As our office stated immediately following the Saturday meeting, the two sides were ‘still very far apart’ — and still are today because of the president’s insistence on keeping the government closed over his expensive and impractical wall,” a spokesman for Mr. Schumer, Justin Goodman, said on Friday.
His latest warning comes as Democrats are preparing to take control of the House of Representatives and have shown no sign of caving on his demands for $5 billion for a border wall. Democrats are considering three different ways to reopen the government, none of which include money for Mr. Trump’s proposed wall, his signature campaign promise. A spokesman for Ms. Pelosi, Drew Hammill, noted that the White House had made no formal outreach to Ms. Pelosi since Dec. 11, when she and Mr. Schumer met with the president.
In a series of tweets on Friday morning, Mr. Trump also complained that the North American Free Trade Agreement cost the United States so much money “that I would consider closing the Southern Border a ‘profit making operation.’” Mr. Trump and Mr. Mulvaney have both claimed that Ms. Pelosi was holding up a deal as leverage to secure votes to be elected speaker next week. But Ms. Pelosi has already clinched the speakership through a weekslong campaign of deal making, arm-twisting and outright auditioning for the job. Such little doubt lingers about her ascendance that her aides began moving into the speaker’s office suite in the heart of the Capitol on Friday after Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin vacated it.
In another sign that the White House sees no end to the shutdown in sight, Mick Mulvaney, the budget director who is set to take over as acting White House chief of staff in the new year, said on “Fox & Friends” on Friday that Mr. Trump would remain in Washington through New Year’s Eve. The president’s attempts to blame Democrats for the shutdown has gained little traction with the public. About 47 percent of adults hold Mr. Trump responsible for the shutdown, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday. In contrast, about 33 percent blame the Democrats in Congress. The poll was conducted Dec. 21 through 25, mostly after the shutdown went into effect.
Mr. Trump, who had been scheduled to spend a 16-day stretch over the holidays at his private club in Florida, has postponed the trip because of the shutdown. His wife, Melania Trump, left on Thursday for the Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, a spokeswoman said. Despite Mr. Trump’s assertions to the contrary, most Democrats support increased funding for border security. Many Senate Democrats, for instance, voted to allocate tens of billions of dollars for security enhancements in 2013, including roughly doubling the size of the border patrol, creating new electronic monitoring systems and even some additional physical barriers at certain points along the border.
When asked about Mr. Trump’s threat to close the border entirely, Mr. Mulvaney said that “what the president is trying to do, and rightly so, is shed some light on what’s happening here.” But that money was in the context of a comprehensive immigration overhaul that would have tried to address systemic problems. By contrast, they view Mr. Trump’s border wall as a costly and ineffective proposal. What is more, they have pointed to government accounting documents that show the Trump administration has spent only a fraction of the money allocated by Congress last year for a physical barrier along the border.
Mr. Mulvaney also sought to divide Democrats, indicating that while he believed Mr. Schumer might be willing to come to a compromise on wall funding, “the more we’re hearing this week is that it’s Nancy Pelosi who is preventing that from happening.” With no endgame in mind, Mr. Trump appears to be boxed in between Democrats who will control the House and have key votes in the Senate and his supporters on the hard right, who have grown more vocal in criticizing him. After administration officials signaled this month that the president was willing to back off his demands for wall funding, the conservative personalities Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh accused the president of being “gutless” and surrendering to Democrats.
To avoid an immediate hit from his base, Mr. Trump appeared to embrace a short-term strategy, celebrating a premature victory when the House passed a short-term funding bill last week that included the money he wanted for more border security.
Typically in spending negotiations, lawmakers join the president in hammering the opposition party over their position. But other than Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, who is a close ally of the president, and a handful of arch-conservative House members, most Republican lawmakers have stayed out of the fray. Even Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, has held off, saying last week that it was up to Democrats and Mr. Trump to reach a deal and only when they did would he hold a vote.
“It’s clear that we on the Republican side do not want to vote for a bill that the president won’t sign,” Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, told reporters on Thursday after presiding over a minutes-long Senate session.
Mr. Trump appeared committed to delivering on his signature campaign promise of building a border wall after the urging from some of his most ardent supporters.
“I don’t know why he wouldn’t make this a fight,” said Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia. “I don’t think you pay any price at this point. The election is in two years, and nobody is going to remember this. But his base will remember that he fought for a wall. I don’t see any political consequence.”
On Friday, Mr. Trump was working in the Oval Office, meeting with staff. His son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, had returned to the White House from a family vacation in Florida on Wednesday. Mr. Mulvaney was also at the White House, having assumed all official duties from the departing chief of staff, John F. Kelly, who does not officially leave his post until the new year, a White House official said. Mr. Kelly was not in the building.
Mr. Trump also reiterated his threat to cut off aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador as punishment to countries he claimed on Twitter “are doing nothing for the United States but taking our money.” Migrants have been fleeing those countries, choosing to confront Mr. Trump’s threats to prevent them from crossing the border over the dangers of life at home.