ZCZC
BFF-11
US-POLITICS-IMMIGRATION-TRUMP-DEMOCRATS
Stop holding Americans ‘hostage’ over shutdown, Pelosi tells Trump
WASHINGTON, Jan 9, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Top congressional Democrats on Tuesday
accused President Donald Trump of holding Americans “hostage” by refusing to
strike a deal to fund shuttered government agencies, and using fear mongering
to justify his demand for his much-hyped border wall.
“President Trump must stop holding the American people hostage, must stop
manufacturing a crisis, and must re-open the government,” Speaker of the
House Nancy Pelosi said in a curt rebuttal to Trump’s address to the nation
minutes earlier, in which he declared the situation on the southern border a
“crisis of the heart.”
The political impasse over Trump’s border wall demand — and the divided
Congress’s refusal to fund it — has kept key government agencies closed for
the past 18 days, with few signs that a breakthrough is imminent.
And with Democrats reclaiming the majority in the House of Representatives,
Trump has lost his monopoly on congressional power that could have helped him
reach agreement with lawmakers.
About 800,000 federal workers, and many more contractors, are not being
paid, but Trump said that problem could be resolved swiftly if Democrats
simply “fund border security.”
In a somber appeal to the nation, Trump spoke of Americans who have been
“savagely murdered in cold blood” by immigrants who crossed illegally into
the United States.
“How much more American blood must we shed before Congress does its job?”
he pleaded.
The Democrats rejected Trump’s fear mongering as “misinformation and even
malice,” with Pelosi blasting the president’s “obsession with forcing
American taxpayers to waste billions of dollars on an expensive and
ineffective wall.”
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer, standing with Pelosi in the US Capitol,
accused Trump of throwing a “temper tantrum” over the border, where he
“appealed to fear, not facts.”
“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,” Schumer said.
“The symbol of America should be the Statue of Liberty, not a 30 foot
wall,” he concluded.
Rank-and-file lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle weighed in
quickly on social media, with Republicans praising Trump for outlining the
facts of a national security crisis on the border and Democrats attacking him
for misleading and dividing Americans.
“Throughout history, presidents have used an Oval Office address to bring
the country together,” tweeted Adam Schiff, chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee.
“Tonight, Trump used it to stoke fear and division.”
BSS/AFP/GMR/0939 hrs