President Trump doubled down on one of the biggest gambles of his presidency on Tuesday night with a televised appeal to pressure Congress into paying for his long-promised border wall, even at the cost of leaving the government partly closed until lawmakers give in.
Embarking on a strategy that he himself privately disparaged as unlikely to work, Mr. Trump devoted the first prime-time Oval Office address of his presidency to his proposed barrier in hopes of enlisting public support in an ideological and political conflict that has shut the doors of many federal agencies for 18 days.
The New York Times reports “in a nine-minute speech that made no new arguments but included multiple misleading assertions, the president sought to recast the situation at the Mexican border as a “humanitarian crisis” and opted against declaring a national emergency to bypass Congress, which he had threatened to do, at least for now. But he excoriated Democrats for blocking the wall, accusing them of hypocrisy and exposing the country to criminal immigrants.”
Even CNN refers to speech as one “an address to the nation (meant to convince Americans of a swelling border crisis that) was at times belied by facts, the President gave little indication he is nearing a compromise that might reopen the federal government.
In their response minutes after Trump concluded on Tuesday, the top Democrats in Congress demonstrated an equally entrenched stance.
With neither side appearing to budge after a high-stakes battle of messaging, the situation appeared unchanged as some federal workers prepare for their first missed paycheck and many agencies remain dark.
As expected, the President used the first Oval Office address of his presidency to warn of “a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border.”
