White House Tries To Spin Trump Caving on His Wall Funding As Bad for Democrats

Days ago, Trump insisted that any spending bill that would keep the government open would include $ 1 billion in funding for his wall. You know, the wall that he promised Mexico was going to pay for, but isn’t.

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The Trump White House tried to spin President Trump caving on the funding for his raison d’être, the Wall, as bad for Democrats on Wednesday morning.

“ANNALS OF SPIN: Priebus tells reporters WH cave on wall funding puts Congressional Ds in bind because they’ve lost reason for govt shutdown,” John Harwood wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning.

In a White House press briefing Tuesday, Sean Spicer tried to explain Trump’s position regarding his cave on the funding for his wall:

Q I do want ask you really quickly about the wall. Yesterday, President Trump reportedly said that he’s going to delay pushing the wall through. And so can you just clarify what the status of that is — what’s happening, when?

MR. SPICER: The President made it very clear — I think he tweeted about this earlier — his priorities have not changed. There will be a wall built. It’s important to prevent human trafficking, gangs like MS-13 from coming into the country, the flow of illegal drugs, illegal immigration. There is a national economic and safety issue by having a wall that ensures our country’s safety, and there’s plenty of planning that can be done in FY17. We’re going to continue — our priorities are clear going into FY17, the remainder of budgeting for that. And we’ll continue to ask for more in FY18.

Q So it’s delayed for now?

MR. SPICER: No, no. I never — no one said delayed. No, no — there’s two budget processes. Right now we’re going to end FY17 this week. We hope to continue to get funding in that, as the President laid out, for both border security and homeland security and national defense, as we’ve always maintained. And then when we come to FY18, that starts at the beginning of October, the end of September, and that next budget will go for the next group of money.

Q So use that partial funding —

MR. SPICER: We’ve made our priorities very clear as we continue to negotiate, and I think nothing has changed on the President’s priorities.

Democrats are not the people who insisted that they would shut down the government over the wall, and in fact Democrats can’t shut down the government because they are not in power in Congress. Congress is led in both chambers by Republicans — a fact this White House knows quite well, because this fact is saving them from a real investigation into the Trump campaign’s associations with Russia.

Trump backing down from his Wall promise means Democrats can’t shut down the government and this is the win Trump is claiming, but it was Trump himself who said he would shut it down if he didn’t get his Wall funding. Not Democrats.

Sarah Jones

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