President Donald Trump declared a national emergency to get funding for a border wall in order to stop “an invasion of our country with drugs, with human traffickers, with all types of criminals and gangs.” He also said that America doesn’t “control our own border.”
From CNN:
“I’m going to be signing a national emergency, and it’s been signed many times before. It’s been signed by other presidents from 1977 or so it gave the presidents the power,” Trump said. “There’s rarely been a problem. They sign it, nobody cares. I guess they weren’t very exciting.”The President argued that he is doing so to address “an invasion of our country with drugs, with human traffickers, with all types of criminals and gangs.””We don’t control our own border,” Trump said. “We’re going to confront the national security crisis on our southern border and we’re going to do it – one way or the other we have to do it.”Trump went on to repeat his past talking points about “tremendous amounts of drugs” crossing into the US from the southern border — even though the majority of those drugs come through ports of entry — and addressed the issue of human trafficking.
Trump promised that America will “confront the national security crisis on our southern border … one way or the other, we have to do it.”
The president also predicted that his national emergency declaration will lose at the federal court circuit and appeals court and will end up in the Supreme Court.
John Roberts at Fox asked Trump about taking money from the Department of Defense. Trump replied that he doesn’t think it’s that important as generals have told him it’s not a problem taking money from military projects in order to pay for the wall.
ABC News reported on Thursday:
A senior White House official familiar with the plan told ABC News that $1.375 billion would come from the spending bill Congress passed Thursday; $600 million would come from the Treasury Department’s drug forfeiture fund; $2.5 billion would come from the Pentagon’s drug interdiction program; and through an emergency declaration: $3.5 billion from the Pentagon’s military construction budget.
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air broke down the math:
If $1.37 billion pays for 55 miles of the wall, as has been stated repeatedly this week, that puts the wall at around $25 million a mile. The Pentagon’s construction budget will pay for 140 more miles, and the combination of the drug-war accounts would pay for 124 miles. All told, the entire package would allow for the construction of 319 miles of wall.
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