As the 116th Congress convened, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer decided the best way to start would be to make inflammatory statements about President Trump.
Schumer claimed that Trump had been “hounded by the far-right, particularly the radio and TV commentators” which resulted in him throwing “a temper tantrum at the eleventh hour and demanded more than five billion dollars for an ineffective border wall.”
“We obviously disagree about the best way to secure the border. We believe the wall is wrong on many counts. The wall is ineffective, most experts agree with that. The wall is expensive,” Schumer stated. “He says it’s a campaign pledge he must keep. That was not his campaign pledge. His campaign pledge was to build the wall and have Mexico pay for it, not American taxpayers. So it’s not a campaign pledge.”
Schumer continued his attack adding that, “The Trump administration has not even spent the border security funding allocated by Congress last year.”
“President Trump is holding the government hostage over his wall, using the well-being of millions of Americans in a futile attempt to get what he wants. A concrete border wall,” he said.
As he finished, Schumer conveniently laid the blame with Republicans, “We have given our Republican colleagues a way out of the shutdown based on Republican approved proposals. All leader McConnell needs to do to reopen the government is to bring to the floor the legislation that he, and nearly every other Republican senator, already supports.”
