White House Chief of Staff: “This is what the President ran on”


Developments on Day 94 of the Trump Administration:

Trump Insists on “The Wall” Despite Risk of Government Shutdown

Four days before a deadline for a Government shutdown, Donald Trump and his advisors are insisting on provision of funding for a wall along the US-Mexican border.

Congress’s emergency authorization is needed by April 28 to avert closure of agencies. The Trump Administration is insisting that the measure must include the initial money for the 2,000-mile barrier along California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, despite the opposition of Democrats and some Republicans.

Not a single lawmaker from the four border states — nine Representatives and eight Senators — supports the Wall’s funding provision in the emergency legislation.

But White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said in an interview on Sunday that Trump and his advisers remain “strong” in their commitment:

This is what the President ran on. We want to get to a place this week where border-security money is being directed to the Department of Homeland Security so that we can begin surveillance and preliminary work, and then we will keep working on getting DHS what it needs for the structure.

Trump made his case on Twitter:

Trump said throughout his campaign that the wall would be funded by Mexico, even though the Mexican Government rejected the barrier, let alone its contribution to the cost. Facing the need to get US money for construction, the President shifted his position on Saturday: “Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying, in some form, for the badly needed border wall.”

Experts say the wall would cost at least $21.6 billion and take 3 1/2 years to construct.

The Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, stood firm, “The burden to keep it open is on the Republicans. Building a wall is not an answer. Not here or any place.”

As the White House lobbied legislators on Sunday, Trump’s budget director Mick Mulvaney appeared to waver. Asked, “Will [Trump] sign a government funding bill that does not include funding for the border wall?”, he replied, “We don’t know yet.”

Mulvaney said the White House expects Democrats to give way in exchange for a continuation of guaranteed payments under the Affordable Care Act, which the GOP has failed to repeal.

But Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer have already rejected a White House offer of a dollar-for-dollar match in wall funding and federal health-care payments.

Senator Marco Rubio, who ran against Trump in the Republican primaries for the Presidency, said the White House should step back: “I think that’s a fight worth having and a conversation and a debate worth having for 2018. If we can do some of that now, that would be great. But we cannot shut down the government right now.”


Attorney General on Insult of Hawaii — “Nobody Has a Sense of Humor Anymore”

Attorney Jeff Sessions refuses to apologize for his slight of Hawaii as “an island in the Pacific” as he derided a federal judge’s blocking of Donald Trump’s “Muslim Ban”.

“Nobody has a sense of humour any more,” Sessions told a Sunday political talk show.

The Attorney General had snapped at Judge Derrick Watson, the circuit court judge who halted both the original and revised versions of the temporary bans on refugees and citizens of seven mainly-Muslim countries entering the US, “I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power.”

Sessions initially tried to step back in an interview with CNN:

I think it’s a fabulous place and had a granddaughter born there. But I got to tell you, it’s a point worth making that a single sitting judge out of 600, 700 district judges can issue an order stopping a presidential executive order that I believe is fully constitutional, designed to protect the United States of America from terrorist attacks.

The Attorney General did not note that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Watson’s initial decision halting the sudden implementation of the ban, or that a federal judge in Maryland also issued a stay against the second travel ban, although with a more limited scope.

“I think it’s a mistake,” Sessions said in his latest interviews, “and we’re going to battle in the courts and I think we’re going to eventually win.”


Trump-Russia: GOP Chairman Holds Up Senate Committee Inquiry

The Senate Intelligence Committee into the links between Trump associates and Russian officials is being held up, largely because of GOP chairman Richard Burr.

More than three months after committee launched its investigation into Russian influence operations in the 2016 election, it has yet to issue a single subpoena for documents or interview any key witnesses. It has not requested potentially crucial evidence — such as the emails, memoranda, and phone records of the Trump campaign — because Burr has failed to respond to requests from the panel’s Democrats to sign letters doing so, sources said.

There are only seven part-time staff assigned to the inquiry, and not one of them has investigative experience.

Asked for comment, Rebecca Watkins, chief spokesperson for Burr, emailed: “We won’t have any comment on internal committee processes.”

The House Intelligence Committee’s investigation broke down after an initial hearing on March 20, largely because of chairman Devin Nunes’ collaboration with the White House. However, now that Nunes has recused himself, the committee has announced a resumption on May 2, including more testimony by FBI Director James Comey and the head of the National Security Agency, Adm. Mike Rogers, and appearances former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former CIA Director John Brennan.