Trump cites unlikely allies Clinton, Obama amid border wall showdown
President Donald Trump makes a video call to service members from the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard stationed worldwide at the White House December 25, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Zach Gibson-Pool/Getty Images)
FOX NEWS - President Trump invoked on Sunday past pro-border security comments by two unlikely political adversaries -- Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- as the ongoing partial federal government shutdown over border wall funding enters its third week.
In a pair of early-morning posts on Twitter, Trump, who is scheduled to meet with advisers at Camp David to discuss border security on Sunday, also seemingly addressed reportsthat the prolonged shutdown will end up costing the government more than the $5 billion he has requested for the wall, writing that in the end, a "properly planned and constructed Wall will pay for itself many times a year!"
Trump's remarks appeared to underscore his unwillingnesss to compromise on securing at least some of his demand for border wall funding, despite the insistence of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that Democrats will never pay for a wall. However, in an interview set to broadcast Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told host Chuck Todd that Trump "was willing to agree, and he mentioned this at the Rose Garden press conference, to take a concrete wall off the table."
Mulvaney had met with senior congressional officials on Saturday to try to make progress on a compromise, although he suggested the encounter had been mostly unproductive.
"If that is not evidence of our willingness to solve the problem," Mulvaney said. "Because again, what's driving this is the president's desire to change the conditions at the border. And if he has to give up a concrete wall, replace it with a steel fence in order to do that so that Democrats can say, 'See? He's not building a wall anymore' that should help us move in the right direction."
On Twitter, the president intimated that only political considerations were animating Democrats' rejection of wall funding. Pelosi and other Democrats have suggested they would be willing to fund general border security efforts, but not a wall. The president has told Democrats the shutdown could last more than a year.