border wall is a critical matter of national security. leaving for a retreated campaign yesterday, the president laying down the arguments. we have the crisis at the border of drugs, of human beings being traffic all over the world. it is national security. national emergency. i debriefing this afternoon like president mike prince said the president made a good offer to democrats the day after christmas, believed to be to put $5 billion for wall construction, democrats rejected it. added while democrats do not dispute there was a crisis building at the southern border, they refused to discuss security funding until the government is reopened. he also was for the president has asked white house counsel emmet flood for an opinion on whether he could build the barrier by declaring a national emergency. president trump has not made a decision whether to do that, which is the idea true sharp condemnation from the other side of the political aisle today. it would be profoundly
about the wall. i said over the weekend to a number of people that the wheel, the wall, there are some things that never get old. of course this morning his senior advisor kellyanne conway was talking to our colleagues at fox & friends and she really tried to hammer home this idea, bill, that nancy pelosi and the democrats have a job to do and the president wants to meet them somewhere in the middle. he wants to negotiate a good deal on border security. nancy pelosi and her ilk keep calling it the wall. they want it to be a four-letter word that s a non-starter. she and other democrats have voted for secure fences and wall funding in the past. that wall funding you may remember that border fencing and security funding should say $25 billion. so the white house is saying if you did it in the past you can do it again with a president trump in office. that means now all eyes turn, my friend, to capitol hill
security funding and border security funding, but a wall is a non-starter. this president knows that and that is the singular factor that caused this shutdown providing immediate pain at the holidays and at the turn of the new year for hundreds of thousands of american workers. it s fundamentally unfair and it s squarely on the shoulders of the president. pie have a very hard time thinking how adults can place the blame anywhere else. we ve seen prototypes of the wall. get those on the screen to see what this is allegedly all about. clint, haven t heard from you. used to work in the fbi. security is kind of your thing. what is your take on the claim of the president he just wants the wall to keep us all safe? are there better ways to do that? there are much better ways to do this. for a couple different reasons. one, any wall without overwatch, we would say in the military, is not a defense. you re just blinding yourself to what s happening on the other side of the wall. they never
it s just a statement at this point. saying the democrats decided to go home, the only rational conclusion is that the democratic party is openly choosing to keep our government closed to protect illegal i wm t immigrants rather than the american people. democrats went home. donald trump stayed in washington. maybe it s a degree of who s playing more politics but the democrats are playing politics as well. do you see there if people really wanted to get to a polla of yes, they could, other than waiting for the president to get to, i give up. it they could get to a place of yes. back in march, kate, i think you and i talked about this before, they had a deal for a whole lot, up to $25 billion in border fencing, security funding for dar daca deal. the president said yes to that. chuck and nancy, we have love for the daca kids. stephen miller overruled him. the problem is the president for all of his bluster doesn t have the backbone to follow through on his commitments. the $25 bi
aren t you concerned, though, congressman, that you may start sharing some of the blame once you come into power come january when nancy pelosi has handed that gavel, if you are not coming to thetable with some kind of funding that meets the president halfway, it sound as though you guys are now saying it s our way or the highway. do you run the risk of being blamed for some of this when you come into power early next year? well, first of all, president trump made clear to the american people and to the world as he sat at 1,600 pennsylvania avenue and said, he s going to shut down the government. it s his shutdown. now, i think what we have put on the table is approximately $1.3 billion in security funding and that is more than sufficient. as you know, jim, approximately that same amount was previously allocated in the last fiscal year and the trump administration has spent