will come up the next day and it will probably be tied up in litigation, which i regret but the courts will decide. what do you say to your constituents? it s congress s job by the constitution to make decisions about how money is spent here and i know a national emergency law was passed in the 1970s but the fact is it has never been used for a funding request that a president can t get through congress. some of your republican colleagues, big supporters of the president, john cornyn among them, said this is a constitutional question. why is that not a constitutional question? shouldn t it be up to the senate and house to sort this out rather than throw it to a national emergency declaration? i think it s litigated and it would be, constitutional issues would be raised. number two, the white house has some good lawyers. my guess is they won t act in terms of a national emergency
forward. from your perspective as a democrat, do you see the president moving in a direction that could be successful? i want to say the approval ratings for the speech reflect who watched the speech so i think there were probably a lot of democrats who just didn t tune in. our own polling showed there was a larger portion of republicans who watched but the independent figures were almost across the board positive for the speech. so i think susan is right. i think ultimately what will matter is what he says and also what he has said up to that point and we know because of excellent reporting that, you know, hours before the speech he was saying all sorts of things that were divisive and not at all about unity. so it s difficult to take the president on his word. in contrast, one of the lines that stood out were i wonder what the president had in mind and it stood out as a speech writer because it rime e rhymed is unusual when he said there can be no peace and legislation if the
investigation. and the way that sentence was constructed, he wanted us to remember it. he made it easy to remember so i wonder where that will go and i don t think that sounds like an olive branch to democrats. that was a line where i think the president was expecting applause and didn t get it from either side of the aisle. it was notable. aisha, you heard lauren fox on the hill. we have a bipartisan group of senators from ways and means discussing. do you have a sense based on your reporting as to what that agreement looks like? i ve spoken to democrats and you ve heard comments that seem to be saying they re willing to give money for this border wall. which would seem to give the president what he wants here. are republicans offering anything in return? it s not clear right now. it does seem like democrats are saying they will accept barriers at certain points, maybe where it makes sense as long as it s not this medieval wall which everyone seems to have moved back from.
barrier or wall or whatever we re calling it today, whatever the politically correct term is, whether it s necessary or not and whether it s politically palatable to her. listen, i will grant you that the speaker has been has dug her heels, other democrats have dug their heels, although we have heard signs that maybe they will give money but you know as well as me that to get this done you need compromise on both sides. sure, sure. what does that compromise look like. if you re sitting in the room with 17 bipartisan senators and lawmakers, what would be your proposal to get this over the finish line to avoid another shutdown. if i were king for a day and i m not and i don t aspire to be the first thing i would do is go to the bottom line with the speaker. i would ask the speaker to
without basing it on statutory power that the president already has. who gave the president that statutory power? the united states congress. you can debate whether we should or should haven t done it, but we did it. i ve done enough research, i m not an expert but i ve done enough research to know if the president decides to go that route, his claims will be heard. he won t be thrown out of court for frivolous litigation. i m not recommending that. we have worked this out by speaking for me personally, i m not willing to just say to speaker pelosi look, it s possible to secure 1900 miles of real estate without a barrier because i don t believe that and experience shows it s not true and i say this gently with the respect i can muster. i think speaker pelosi has to decide how important policy is