UPDATE: President Trump will veto individual pieces of funding legislation for separate sectors of the federal government. They do not include border barrier funding.
***Original***
President Trump made his way to Capitol Hill Wednesday in an effort to keep his Republican coalition intact as Democrats refuse to negotiate on border security.
“We can all play games, but the wall is a necessity. All of the other things—the sensors and the drones—it’s all wonderful to have, it works well if you have the wall. If you don’t have the wall, it doesn’t matter. A drone isn’t stopping a thousand people from running through," Trump said at the White House during a human trafficking bill sigining before heading to the hill. "We can all talk—and you know interestingly, if you look, practically every Democrat over the last 15 years they’ve approved what we’re asking for. I think we’re doing something, I think we’re getting closer. But we really have to think about the people of our country.”
“This is not a fight I wanted. I didn’t want this fight. This is about the people of our country, and we have to do what’s right at our border and many other places. Human trafficking is not going to stop if we don’t have a steel barrier or a concrete barrier. It cannot be stopped," he continued.
Trump's resolve on the matter hasn't wavered and he called a potential cave on government funding without border security "foolish."
"I think we have tremendous Republican support. I’ll tell you what, I just spoke to a few of the people in the House. The Senate has been incredible, Mitch McConnell has been incredible. He said if the president’s not going to sign it, I’m not going to waste my time. Rob Portman’s here, he can tell you, he’s very strong on border security. We have tremendous support in the Senate, we have tremendous support in the House," Trump said. "The Democrats have their people breaking away too. The fact is that there is tremendous support. I would go - without support, I would be the first one to go. And maybe the last one, too. But there is tremendous support. If I did something that was foolish, like gave up on border security, the first ones that would hit me would be my senators - they’d be angry at me. The second ones would be the House. And the third ones would be frankly my base and a lot of Republicans out there and a lot of Democrats that want to see border security.”
On Tuesday evening ahead of Trump's primetime Oval Office address, Vice President Mike Pence made a visit to Capitol Hill to gather support for the administration's shutdown strategy. Today, cracks among Republicans are appearing as Democrats propose votes on individual funding bills for a number of government agencies.
There is some rumbling among some moderate Republicans about pushing to re-open the government, regardless of where they are with the wall.
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) January 9, 2019
Sens. Cory Gardner (R-CO), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) are leaning in that direction.
Sen. Murkowski says she’s going to share her concerns about government funding impasse with Trump today. She wants party to reopen government and deal with border fight after
— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) January 9, 2019
Tomorrow marks the first missed paycheck for federal workers. Trump has not ruled out declaring a national emergency.
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