Trump Affirms He'll Shut Down Gov Over Wall: 'Chances Are Probably Very Good'
By Matt Shuham
December 21, 2018 1:50 pm
Speaking from the Oval Office on Friday, President Donald Trump affirmed that the odds he will shut down the government over his insistence that Congress appropriate $5 billion for a border wall are “probably very good.”
The President has long said that he would be willing to shut down the government over border wall funding, a point Democrats have hammered home in recent days.
Wall funding has little chance of passing the Senate, but Trump’s insistence on the funds has led to a gridlocked Capitol Hill careening toward a partial government shutdown on Friday night.
Trump has tried to shift blame to Democrats for the impending shutdown, and did so again Friday from the Oval Office: “It’s really up to the Democrats — totally up to the Democrats as to whether we have a shutdown,” he said.
He also repeated numerous falsehoods in his argument for wall, such as one particularly startling — and wildly untrue — claim that the United States spends “$285 billion a year on illegal immigration.”
Trump also falsely claimed that former President Ronald Reagan “tried to get a wall, and he fought for a long time, during his entire term, and he was never able to get a wall.” Reagan campaigned against erecting a border wall, and in fact established a path to attain green cards for millions by signing the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. That law included funding for increased border enforcement, but not for wall construction.
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