Trump Won’t Shut Down Government Over Border Wall Until After November Elections


Donald Trump says he won’t consider shutting down the government over funds for his proposed border wall with Mexico until after the midterms because he wouldn’t want to hurt GOP’s chances.

In an interview with Fox and Friends that aired Friday, Trump said that he would have shut down the government now over the wall’s funding unless it for the advice he received from “good people” who told him not to do so until after the crucial November elections.

“We need Republicans elected in the midterms. We are getting the wall done. But I’ve had so many people, good people, great people, [say] they would rather not do [it] before [the midterms], they’d rather do it right after the election.”

Funding for the wall runs out at the end of September and Republicans are worried that shutting the government could hurt GOP’s chances in the midterms, which, in all possibility, could go on to define whether or not the 25th Amendment is invoked against the American president.

A bombshell New York Times op-ed penned by an anonymous senior White House official claimed that Trump’s closest aides and the GOP top brass had more than once considered the possibility of a Trump impeachment, but had only refrained from pushing ahead with the idea because it would be messy. The Republicans would want Trump to finish his tenure, and for that reason alone, the midterms remain unambiguously important for the future of American politics and GOP’s control over it.

But Trump is worried that his core group of supporters would be disillusioned if he doesn’t build the wall, a promise which he had campaigned heavily on. He attempted to assure his supporters during the interview that he would push ahead with securing funds “right” after the elections and had Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s “commitment” on it.

Trump also blasted the New York Times for carrying the anonymous op-ed, saying it amounted to “treason.”

“It’s treason, you could call it a lot of things,” he said, adding that “fake” books about him could be discredited because he knew the authors, but anonymous pieces were “unfair” because it could have been the work of an operative of the s0-called “deep state,” a theory Trump has often championed.

“What’s unfair, I don’t mind when they write a book and they make lies because it gets discredited. [But] when somebody writes and you can’t discredit because you have no idea who they are.”

“It may be a deep state person who’s been there a long time. It’s a very unfair thing.”

The New York Times nonetheless maintained that it knew the identity of the writer, and even posted its vetting process. The publication said that it was only withholding the name because it would jeopardize the author’s job at the White House.

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