Trump speaks as he departs the White House in Washington, DC, for meetings at Camp David. — AFP photo
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump stood firm on his demand for billions of dollars to fund a border wall with Mexico, claiming ‘tremendous’ support inside his camp on the contentious issue which has forced a government shutdown now entering its third week.
“We have to build the wall,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House for the Camp David presidential retreat. “It’s about safety, it’s about security for our country.
The US president warned once more that he may invoke emergency powers to get a wall built without congressional approval.
“I may declare a national emergency, dependent on what’s going to happen over the next few days,” he said.
One prominent House Democrat, Adam Schiff, immediately rejected the talk of a national emergency. He noted that when former president Harry Truman used such language in an attempt to nationalise the steel industry and end a labor strike during the Korean War, he was rebuffed by the Supreme Court.
“So that’s a nonstarter,” Schiff said on CNN. He said Trump had painted himself into a corner and needs to ‘figure out how he unpaints himself from that corner.’
An impasse with lawmakers over funding for the border wall – Trump is demanding US$5.6 billion, while Senate Democrats have offered US$1.3 billion – has partially shut down the federal government since Dec 22. Trump said that the standoff could last ‘months or even years.’
The shutdown has left some 800,000 federal workers sent home or working without pay. Large numbers of federal contractors are also losing pay in what is already one of the longest shutdowns in US history.
Talks aimed at ending the shutdown were to resume yesterday in Vice-President Mike Pence’s office, a day after a meeting involving him and representatives of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the top two Democrats in Congress, made little headway.
Trump indicated, however, that he was not expecting a weekend breakthrough, saying there would be ‘very serious talks come Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.’
Trump repeated his claim that many furloughed federal workers ‘agree 100 per cent’ with his demands, while asserting he also had ‘tremendous support within the Republican Party.’
But Democrats, who now control the House of Representatives, seem in no mood to make concessions on a border wall Pelosi has described as an ‘immorality.’
Pelosi said in an interview that if the president “doesn’t care whether people’s needs are met, or that public employees are paid or that we can have a legitimate discussion, then we have a problem.”
Reflecting the depth of the divide, she added on CBS’s ‘Sunday Morning’ that Trump sometimes gave the impression that “he would like to not only close government, build a wall, but also abolish Congress, so the only voice that mattered was his own.” — AFP