After President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence wrapped up separate meetings on border security and the ongoing partial federal government shutdown on Sunday, Trump offered his strongest endorsement yet of a proposal to build a steel wall, rather than a concrete barrier, at the southern border.
Meanwhile, a Democratic source told Fox News that the Pence-led meeting with bipartisan congressional staff at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) near the White House had accomplished little, and started nearly an hour late because Trump administration officials were unprepared. Trump called the meeting “productive” afterward, although he was not in attendance.
The president framed his new pitch for a steel wall as a concession to Democrats to move negotiations along, as the shutdown entered its 16th day. Meanwhile, Democrats published the full text of several spending bills to reopen the government on Sunday that the White House and Senate Republicans have long said have no chance of becoming law because they do not include any funding for a wall of any kind.
“They don’t like concrete, so we’ll give them steel,” Trump told reporters after returning to the White House from a meeting with his advisers at Camp David.
Trump also suggested he would rather wait until the Supreme Court rules on the legality of his administration’s recission of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program before negotiating with Democrats on the issue as part of the talks to end the shutdown. – READ MORE