White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney claimed dozens of Democrats in Congress support Trump’s wall. However, none of those Democrats have voted for it.
Transcript via CBS’s Face The Nation:
MARGARET BRENNAN: Is the President really prepared to shut down the government again in three weeks?
MICK MULVANEY: Yeah. I think he actually is. Keep in mind he’s willing to do whatever it takes to secure the border. He does take this very seriously. This is a serious humanitarian and security crisis. And as President of the United States he takes the security of the nation as his highest priority. He doesn’t want to shut the government down. Let’s make that very clear. He doesn’t want to declare a national emergency. What he wants to do is fix this the way that things are supposed to get fixed with our government which is through legislation. One of the reasons he– he agreed to open the government this week was to essentially take the Democrats at their word while their leadership have been telling us they were not interested in negotiating and they were sort of taking this do nothing and hope the President gives up approach. There were many, many Democrats, both rank and file and some lower levels of leadership, would come to us and say, look, we– we happen to agree with you on border security–
MARGARET BRENNAN: Which Democrats?
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MICK MULVANEY: –some of them were even very public about it. Well, Dick Durbin publicly said that we’ll have some walls in the future. Jim Clyburn, my former colleague from South Carolina, actually said that if you could convince him that the experts said we needed a border barrier he would vote for that. So there’s many, many Democrats, dozens of them have come out over the last couple of weeks to say, you know what, this crisis is real. Let’s figure out a way to do it properly but we can’t do it with the government closed. I think with what you saw this week was the President take them at their word and say, okay, y’all have said you want to do this, I’ll– let’s give it a shot and see over the next three weeks we can do this the right way and pass legislation to fund the government and secure the border.
Video:
None of the Democrats that Mulvaney named support Trump’s wall
The Democrats that Mulvaney named didn’t vote for Trump’s wall. If it is true that dozens of Democrats have come over to support Trump’s wall, why did the president cave on the government shutdown? The reality is that Trump doesn’t have the votes for his wall. He didn’t have the votes for the wall when Republicans controlled the House and the Senate, and she still doesn’t have votes for his wall today.
The government shutdown hurt Trump the most so the threat of a new shutdown is like someone breaking into your house and threatening to shoot themselves if you don’t give them your money. Democrats don’t care politically if Trump shuts the government down again, because the president will be blamed. The conference committee is likely to agree on border security funding that does not include wall money.
Democrats aren’t going to support Trump’s wall, and any new shutdowns are going to be all on Donald Trump.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
