Wednesday on ABC’s “The View,” the panel discussed President Donald Trump threatening a government shutdown over funding for a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Whoopi Goldberg said, “There’s a December 7 government shutdown looming, and the guy in the White House says it will happen if he doesn’t get $5 billion for his border wall. This was the biggest campaign promise he ran on. Do you think he’s going to shut it down? ”
Co-host Joy Behar said, “You know what, let him shut it down. Shut it down. The Republicans did in ’96, and they lost the election right after that. And the Republicans are always saying they want smaller government. This is a good way to get it, shut it down.”
Co-host Abby Huntsman said, “He’s threatened it though already a couple of times this year. Then he backed away. There was one point where he was asking for $25 billion, remember?”
She continued, “What this continues to do is, one, it riles up his base because they continue to want to hear, ‘I’m fighting to build that wall,’ and two, it blames the Democrats, a message that he continues to have and wants to keep going to 2020.”
Behar said, “How much red meat does his base need? Are there no vegetarians in his base at all?”
Co-host Sunny Hostin said, “I don’t get this whole thing. First, he said Mexico was going to build the wall, right? He promised Mexico was going to pay for the wall, so why do we have— taxpayers have to pay for the wall? That’s the first thing. And the second thing is if you look at the statistics, since I think it was 2010, more Asian immigrants than Hispanic immigrants have been coming to this country. And so for me, this is a racial issue. He’s concerned about black and brown people coming into the country as opposed to other folks coming into the country, and that really bothers me, because if he’s giving his base red meat, then he’s racializing this situation.”
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