President Donald Trump used the words of former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for a border barrier and against illegal immigration to advocate Sunday for the same things.
“We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country,” Barrack Obama said in 2005 while still a U.S. Senator from Illinois.
“I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in. And I do think you have to control your borders,” then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told a town hall audience in 2015 according to the Weekly Standard.
President Trump referenced Obama and Clinton Sunday in defense of the need to build a wall at the southern border, something reinstated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused this week to give any funding for.
“The only reason they do not want to build a Wall is that Walls Work!” the president said Sunday. “99% of our illegal Border crossings will end, crime in our Country will go way down and we will save billions of dollars a year! A properly planned and constructed Wall will pay for itself many times a year!”
President Trump has made clear he requires $5.6 billion in border wall and security funding in the partial government funding bill. Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have this week flat refused any funding for the border wall.
Vice President Mike Pence led Saturday meetings with staff of Congressional Democrat and Republican leadership, Senior Advisor to the president Jared Kushner, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and members of White House Staff. While Pence reaffirmed the president’s commitment to building the border wall and securing the border, Democrat representatives demanded more information from DHS.
Trump was briefed on the meeting before announcing “Not much headway made today. Second meeting set for tomorrow. After so many decades, must finally and permanently fix the problems on the Southern Border!”
The president headed to Camp David Sunday for meetings on the wall, North Korea, and China. “We have to build the wall or we have to buld the barrier. The barrier or the wall can be of steel instead of concrete if that works better,” he told reporters as he departed the White House. “This is a very important battle to win from the standpoint of safety, number one, defining our country and who we are. Also from the standpoint of dollars. This wall will pay for itself many times through the course of the year.”
He re-emphasized the importance of building a southern border barrier, “It’s about stopping human traffickers, it’s about stopping drugs. So we have to have it.”
Michelle Moons is a White House Correspondent for Breitbart News — follow on Twitter @MichelleDiana and Facebook