Trump commits to steel wall in shutdown negotiations, as Pence wraps up second meeting
After President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence wrapped up separate meetings on border security and the ongoing partial federal government shutdown on Sunday, Trump offered his strongest endorsement yet of a proposal to build a steel wall, rather than a concrete barrier, at the southern border.
The president framed the pitch as a concession to Democrats to move negotiations along, as the shutdown entered its 16th day. Meanwhile, Democrats published the full text of several bills on Sunday that the White House and Senate Republicans have long said have no chance of becoming law because they do not include any funding for a wall of any kind.
"They don't like concrete, so we'll give them steel," Trump told reporters after returning to the White House from a meeting with his advisers at Camp David.
At a separate sit-down at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building near the White House, Pence – along with Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen – on Sunday discussed a variety of border-security measures with congressional officials from both parties.
“Democrats were given what they asked for, which was a detailed, breakdown list of the administration’s proposals for border security that include the wall and other border protection measures," a House GOP leadership aide told Fox News. "Democrats were given the opportunity to ask questions of Secretary Nielsen and hear DHS’ justification for the specific funding requests. Their justifications made it abundantly clear why it is necessary to have this level of funding to effectively secure our border.”
Trump's steel wall proposal was the continuation of a White House strategy that has developed in the past several weeks. Trump first floated the idea of using "artistically designed steel slats" for the wall, rather than concrete, in December.
He then suggested taking the concrete wall off the table at a Rose Garden news conference on Friday, as a concession to Democrats. And, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said in an interview on NBC News' "Meet the Press" on Sunday that Trump "was willing to agree … to take a concrete wall off the table" in order to secure a deal to end the ongoing shutdown.
"We've been in touch with a lot of people, and I informed my folks to say that we'll build a steel barrier — steel – that it will be made out of steel, that it will be less obtrusive and stronger," Trump said.
Some ex-White House officials have suggested Trump abandoned the idea of a concrete wall in the early days of his tenure. In an explosive interview published shortly before his departure from the Trump administration at the end of last year, former chief of staff John Kelly told the Los Angeles Times that the White House had "left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration, when we asked people what they needed and where they needed it."
For his part, Pence tweeted only that he was "back at the White House" Sunday afternoon.
While Pence noted that the president was "committed to securing the border, building the wall, & working to reopen our government," he pointedly did not call the meeting "productive," as he did after a similar get-together with congressional staff on Saturday.
Earlier Sunday, speaking to reporters before he headed out to Camp David to discuss border security with top advisers, Trump had predicted that the Pence-run meeting would not lead to any major developments.
"I don't expect to have anything to happen at that meeting," Trump said.
Previous meetings between Democrats and White House officials have been heated: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Nielsen, the DHS secretary, reportedly got into a tense confrontation on Wednesday in the Situation Room, with the California Democrat interrupting Nielsen’s presentation on border security and illegal immigration, telling her, “I reject your facts.”
The president additionally said he was "totally involved" in shutdown negotiations and claimed to have "tremendous support within the Republican Party."
The longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history lasted 21 days, and Trump has said repeatedly that current one may last more than a year if Democrats are not willing to fund some of the wall.
more: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pences-second-meeting-with-congressional-officials-over-border-shutdown