Last updated on January 10th, 2019 at 01:51 am
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer threw down on Trump and showed that the adults in the room aren’t playing.
Pelosi said:
I appreciate the opportunity to speak directly to the American people tonight about how we can end this shutdown and meet the needs of the American people. Sadly, much of what we heard from president trump throughout the shutdown as been full of misinformation and even mall — malice. The president has chosen fear. We want to start with facts. The fact is house Democrats passed Senate Republican legislation to reopen government and fund smart, effective border security solutions. But the president is rejecting the bipartisan bills, which would reopen government over his obsession with forcing American taxpayers to waste billions of dollars on an expensive and ineffective wall, a wall he always promised Mexico would pay the fact is, president trump has chosen to hold hostage critical services for the health, safety and well being of the American people and with hold the paychecks of 800,000 innocent workers across the nation, many of them veterans.
He promised to keep government shutdown for months or years, no matter whom it hurts. That’s just plain wrong. The fact is, we all agree we need to secure the borders while honoring our values. We can build the infrastructure and roads at ports of entry. We can install new technology to scan cars and trucks for drugs coming into the nation. We can hire the personnel we need to facilitate trade and immigration at the border. We can fund more innovation to detect unauthorized crossings. The fact is, that women and children at the border are not a security threat. They are a humanitarian challenge a challenge president trump’s own cruel and counter productive policies have only deepened and the fact is, president trump must stop holding American people hostage, must stop manufacturing a crisis and must reopen the government.
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Sen. Schumer hit Trump for manufacturing a crisis:
My fellow Americans, we address you tonight for one reason only, the president of the United States having failed to get Mexico to pay for his ineffective, unnecessary border wall and unable to convince the Congress or the American people to foot the bill has shut down the government. American democracy doesn’t work that way. We don’t govern by temper tantrum. No president should pound the table and demand he gets his way or else the government shuts down. Hurting millions of Americans who are treated as leverage.
Tonight, and throughout this debate and throughout his presidency, president trump has appealed to fear, not facts, division, not unity. Make no mistake, Democrats and the president both want stronger border security. However, we sharply disagree with the president about the most effective way to do it. So, how do we untangle this well, there is an obvious separate the shutdown from arguments over border security.
There is bipartisan legislation supported by Democrats and Republicans to open the government while allowing the debate over boarder security to continue. There is no excuse for hurting millions of Americans over a policy difference. Federal workers are about to miss a paycheck. Some families can’t get a mortgage to buy a new home. Farmers and small businesses won’t get loans they desperately need. Most presidents have used oval office addresses for noble purposes. This president just used the backdrop of the oval office to manufacture a crisis, stoke fear and divert attention from the turmoil in his administration.
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Pelosi and Schumer made Trump look like a tantruming child, and humiliated him in front of the entire nation. Democrats have a message that sounds logical and reasonable, while Trump could not offer a single coherent and factual argument for his wall. Never has a president tried to use the Oval Office platform and had it backfire so spectacularly.
The Democrats have a spine of steel, and the wall is never happening.
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