Late Wednesday night, Democrats Sen. Schumer and White House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced they’d reached a deal with Trump on DACA and that funding for Trump’s campaign cornerstone, the border wall, was not part of the agreement, though they’d agreed to include some form of beefed up border security.
Trump and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders both denied any deal was made.
On Fox News Wednesday night, Huckabee Sanders said:
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that President Trump is committed to building the border wall.“The wall is already going through extensive renovations. They’re already building sample walls. That part is already moving forward. The president is 100 committed to the wall,” Mrs. Sanders said on Fox News. “These efforts are going to continue.”
Early Thursday morning Trump tweeted no deal was made:
Then an hour later, followed up saying the border wall already exists in the form of a renovated fence that already exists along parts of the southern border, that no one wants to kick out DREAMers, and something about “BIG border security”.
But then later:
And bonus:
So what’s going on?
Trump and his comms team claim no deal was made. Fine. But where is the funding for the border wall? And why is the wall now a fence repair project? And why do Trump’s tweets sound exactly like the deal Democrats claimed they reached? Sure sounds an awful lot like Republican border security plans circa 2014 and a lot less like the campaign promises of 2016.
But this may all have been much ado about nothing. In the statement released by Pelosi Wednesday night, Pelosi described the meeting with Trump as resulting in an agreement “to a plan to work out an agreement”.
The bipartisan efforts are refreshing, but that’s the only bright spot here, politically speaking.
The Dream Act has bipartisan support, but Republicans are going to be far less willing to sign on to such a bill without something major in return, like funding for a border wall. But who knows, the Republican caucus is such a cluster these days, we can be sure of one thing — if there’s a way to botch this further, they’ll find it, double down, and then go full Leeroy Jenkins.
Follow Kemberlee on Twitter @kemberleekaye
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