President Trump: I have the absolute right to declare a national emergency if we can't make a deal on the border wall
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office after signing the anti-human trafficking bill, President Trump says that America will never have border security without the wall.
President Trump’s speech to the nation Tuesday night was a home run for anyone who believes we should build a border wall and protect America. He forcefully and carefully laid out compelling reasons for building the wall.
The president addressed the drug and human smuggling that is flooding the border. He spoke about the victims of violence by illegal immigrants. He addressed the glaring need to build a wall and secure the border for humanitarian purposes. The need for a wall is immediate and a national security issue.
The Democratic leaders – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York – looked stiff and wooden. They claimed to support border security but didn’t iterate a single idea of how they would secure the border.
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Pelosi and Schumer argued that there isn’t a border crisis and suggested that President Trump was manufacturing one. Yet the Democratic leaders failed to counter a single fact introduced by President Trump. The president’s case was factual and rational – and quite frankly, overwhelmed the unprepared Democratic leaders.
The president’s case seemed irrefutable.
Consider the facts on drug and human smuggling. Ninety percent of heroin, cocaine and other dangerous drugs are coming across our southern border. The Democrats did not contest this fact.
More than 2,000 illegal immigrants are interdicted daily (not counting the “get-aways”) coming across the southern border. The Democrats did not disagree.
Criminal illegal immigrants have been charged or convicted of more than 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sexual assaults, and 4,000 murders in the last two years. Pelosi and Schumer assented to these facts by their silence.
One-third of women who are attempting to enter the U.S. illegally are sexually assaulted (a number that comes from Doctors Without Borders). Pelosi and Schumer failed to contest this fact.
Children are flooding into our nation – 20,000 last month. The Democratic leaders cannot deny this fact.
The Democrats failed to even put up a fight! They can’t. They cannot dispute the evidence that demonstrates a national crisis at the border. They lamely claim it is a manufactured crisis and feign outrage that anyone in authority would put American lives ahead of those who are trying to enter the country illegally.
In response to the emergency, President Trump proposed more Border Patrol agents, more Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) agents, more detention facilities, more immigration judges, more staff, more technology, more weapons and tools – and, of course, a border wall. He was quite specific. He wants a lot of help to fix this border crisis to ensure the safety of Americans.
How did the Democrats react? They denied there is a crisis, but said, they “support border security.” Weak sauce! They did not name a single initiative or proposal to solve the border problem. They are feckless.
Instead of trying to solve the issue, the Democrats exacerbate the problem by digging in and taking the untenable position of demanding that the federal government reopen the 20 percent of the government where workers are currently not being paid before they will even come to the table to negotiate. That is bad faith.
If I were the president, I wouldn’t trust the Democratic leaders. They will not work to solve the problem without some kind of leverage that will motivate them to deliver a “secure border” to the American people.
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The president’s speech was his best yet. He must stand firm. America needs a border wall and he can deliver the wall.
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