Hopping on what Cortney wrote earlier today, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that the president told him that he was willing to keep the government shut down for months or even years. The two sides are at a standstill on budget negotiations over border wall funding. The Democrats, who have retaken the House, aren’t going to give him a cent for it. Even if we weren’t in a shutdown, House Democrats wouldn’t want to play ball with this White House. They retook the lower chamber to declare war on the Trump agenda. The president isn’t backing down either. Any spending package has to include $5 billion for the wall. Today, he said he might declare a national emergency to get it done (via WaPo):
President Trump on Friday threatened to use emergency powers to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a move that would defy a Congress that — amid Democratic opposition — has thus far refused to allocate any new money for a border wall.
Asked Friday if he would declare a national emergency to get the wall built, Trump responded: “We can do it. I haven’t done it. I may do it. I may do it.”
The government has been partially shut down since Dec. 22, as Trump has demanded any budget deal include more than $5 billion in wall funding.
"I can do it if I want," Trump now saying he is "allowed" to build the wall himself without congressional approval or appropriation. "We can call a national emergency and build it very quickly."
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 4, 2019
Prior to the shutdown, Trump said if Democrats don’t give him the money for the wall, he could ask the military to do it. This is a key campaign promise that must be fulfilled—and the president cannot cave. Everyone knows this, so grab some more popcorn because this movie isn’t even to the halfway mark.