US President Donald Trump on Tuesday used a prime-time address to the nation to insist on US$5.7 billion for a steel wall along the Mexican border that he said would stop the shedding of “American blood” by illegal immigrants.
The nine-minute speech from the White House’s Oval Office offered no concessions to US Democrats refusing to fund a border wall.
The address also offered no hope for a quick end to a partial government shutdown triggered by the row that has left 800,000 federal employees without pay.
Photo: AFP
However, Trump did steer away from earlier predictions that he might announce a national emergency, which would have given him the power to authorize the wall project without congressional approval, likely triggering an even deeper political crisis.
Trump spoke in an unusually measured voice, apparently hoping to claim the moral high ground, and said he wanted to bridge the political divide in what could be the defining power struggle of his turbulent presidency.
“I have invited congressional leadership to the White House tomorrow to get this done. Hopefully, we can rise above partisan politics in order to support national security,” he said. “This situation could be solved in a 45-minute meeting.”
Despite that softer tone, Trump spent much of the speech doubling down on his controversial message — popular among his right-wing base — that illegal immigration at the US-Mexican border is above all a threat to the lives of Americans.
He listed gruesome examples of crimes committed by illegal immigrants, including a “beheading and dismembering,” and said he would “never forget the pain” of survivors that he had met.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in her rebuttal speech that the real problem was Trump’s “cruel and counterproductive policies” making the border ever more dangerous for vulnerable migrants, including young families.
Fact-checking teams at US media outlets quickly took issue with a number of Trump’s assertions — for instance, his statement that every day US agents at the border with Mexico “encounter thousands of illegal immigrants trying to enter our country.”
That number is vastly overstated, CNN and The New York Times said.
Also wrong are Trump’s assertions that 90 percent of the heroin entering the US crosses over from Mexico and that Mexico, indirectly, via a new trade agreement with the US and Canada, would end up paying for a wall, the Times said.
The speech offered no hope of a resolution to the government shutdown that started 18 days ago as a negotiating tactic, but has turned into a symbol of dysfunctional Washington politics — and increasingly a painful situation for unpaid workers.
Salaries were put on hold for large numbers of employees when Trump refused to sign government spending bills as a way of trying to strong-arm the Democrats into funding his wall.
Pelosi accused Trump of “holding the American people hostage.”
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