Trump takes pitch for border wall to prime time

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump took his disputed claim of a national security crisis at the nation’s southern border directly to the American people on Tuesday night, for the first time speaking from the Oval Office in prime time to try to enlist public support for $5.7 billion for his long-promised wall.

Yet while the president aimed to put pressure on his Democratic opponents, even before he spoke his Republican support seemed to be eroding further. Several more Republican senators called for an end to the shutdown regardless of funding for Trump’s signature wall.

“There is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border,” Trump said in a 10-minute address, sitting at his familiar desk. He added, “All Americans are hurt by uncontrolled illegal migration.”

The president said that constructing a steel barrier, as he called it, is “absolutely critical to border security. It’s also what our professionals at the border want and need.”

The president stopped short of declaring the national emergency he’s spoken of in recent days, which he’s said would allow him to bypass Congress and tap existing funds for a wall. He also steered clear, after days of criticism, of repeating some of the false claims that thousands of terrorists were crossing the border. But as he often does at political rallies, he vividly described a few violent crimes allegedly committed by people who are in the U.S. illegally.

His address punctuated a public relations offensive to break a standoff with lawmakers that has blocked funding for about a quarter of the government, keeping affected agencies closed since Dec. 22 for the longest such shutdown since 1996. By Saturday, if unresolved, it will surpass that record.

The impasse has left about 800,000 workers without paychecks this week, though about half must still report for work. It has closed popular national parks and left others opened but ill-attended and filling with trash. Real estate closings, farming plans and other businesses that depend on federal offices have been disrupted, reflecting the increasing number of disrupted services reliant on the government.

Trump has argued, despite polling to the contrary, that federal workers and other Americans accept any such sacrifices, given their support for his stand for a border wall to keep the country safe.

Apprehensions at the southern border have been declining for two decades, and no terrorists are known to have crossed it.

Democrats and advocates who favor less restrictive immigration policies dispute that a crisis has ensued. There is some agreement on the humanitarian imperatives, including the need to spend more money on immigration judges and other officials necessary to process refugee claims that have piled up, in part because of administration policies discouraging such claims. Democrats also have called for investigating detention centers at the border, after the recent deaths of two migrant Guatemalan children in U.S. custody.

Days after Democrats assumed control of the House last week amid the standoff, the White House on Monday hurriedly arranged the Oval Office address as Trump has tried to dominate the debate this week. He also sent Vice President Mike Pence on a series of interviews with network news reporters on Tuesday morning. Trump and Pence are expected to meet with Republican senators at the Capitol on Wednesday, and Trump plans to go to the border in McAllen, Texas, on Thursday.

The president predictably sought to lay blame for the impasse on Democrats. “The federal government remains shut down for one reason and one reason only - because Democrats will not fund border security,” he said.

Moments after Trump’s speech, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York delivered a televised rebuttal, arguing against what Pelosi calls the “immoral” wall while making the case for reopening the government before any negotiations about border security.

Pelosi noted that Trump had rejected bipartisan bills in the Senate and House to reopen government “over his obsession with forcing American taxpayers to waste billions of dollars on an expensive and ineffective wall - a wall he always promised Mexico would pay for.”

Schumer complained, “The president just used the backdrop of the Oval Office to manufacture a crisis, stoke fear and divert attention from the turmoil of his administration.” He insisted that Democrats were not opposed to spending for border security, but only for the wall.

Democrats, who have not been willing to approve more than $1.3 billion in additional border security funding, haven’t budged during the 18-day standoff.

Pelosi and Schumer had demanded the television networks allow them time to respond. The dueling speeches gave the evening the air of a State of the Union address, an annual event that is scheduled for Jan. 29. Presidents since Harry Truman have delivered prime-time Oval Office addresses, typically at moments of domestic or international significance, but Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama disliked the format and used it rarely as technology has given Americans more viewing and entertainment options.

Trump, who is most comfortable criticizing immigration at a rollicking rally, seemed muted and discomfited as he narrowed his eyes to read from the teleprompter. Pelosi and Schumer, standing beside each other stiffly, looked no more at ease than the president.

The battle over a wall has become a defining political test for Trump and it has set an especially combative tone for the final two years of his term. He promised repeatedly during the 2016 campaign to build a wall along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico, while also insisting improbably that Mexico would pay for it.

In his address, the president repeated his claim that Mexico in effect would pay for the wall through increased trade resulting from the recently renegotiated North American trade agreement with Mexico and Canada - an assertion that many experts and fact-checkers have derided.

The showdown over the wall began last month in the final days of Republicans’ two-year hold on Washington’s levers of legislative power - the White House, House and Senate. Congressional Republicans, a number of them unenthusiastic about Trump’s signature cause, did not press hard for his funding requests in that time, and Senate leaders have not lent him vocal support lately.

Indeed, about half a dozen Senate Republicans - including several facing re-election battles next year - indicated they wanted the president’s showdown to end even without money for a wall. On Tuesday, Sens. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska called for reopening the government, joining others who’ve signaled opposition to an ongoing shutdown, including Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine.

Yet so far, neither the president nor congressional Democrats have been willing to give in.

Trump has been hounded by conservative media allies to keep up the fight, even as Republicans in Congress have tried to move on.

Democrats, emboldened by their new majority in the House as well as Trump’s declarations a month ago that he would take responsibility for a shutdown, believe they have the leverage and have been unwilling to yield. They have previously supported money for border barriers in past years’ immigration compromises but now see the issue as politically toxic to their ?anti-Trump voters.