Posted on January 2, 2018

Trump Says Democrats Are Playing Dreamers As He Promises to Build His ‘Desperately Needed WALL’

Francesca Chambers, Daily Mail, January 2, 2018

President Donald Trump accused Democrats of using Dreamers as political pawns on Tuesday.

Trump made a bold prediction that Hispanics would realign with his political party as they came to the realization that Democrats are not sincere about advocating for their interests.

‘Democrats are doing nothing for DACA — just interested in politics. DACA activists and Hispanics will go hard against Dems, will start “falling in love” with Republicans and their President! We are about RESULTS,’ Trump tweeted.

The president had said earlier in the morning after watching a Fox & Friends segment on the border that his administration ‘will build the desperately needed WALL!’

He’s offering to trade border wall funding for Dream Act legislation that allows illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as minor to remain in the country indefinitely.

Trump also wants a complete overhaul of the immigration system as part of the deal.

His Tuesday morning tweet taunted Democrats who want to use a spending resolution that expires later this month as leverage to get a permanent replacement to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals approved free and clear.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has been threatening to shut the government down until Republicans agree to a clean DACA fix.

They ran into a road block last month when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer refused to stand with them when they voted to reject a short-term spending deal that extended government funding past Christmas.

Democrats who are supportive of the strategy are now eyeing a make-it or break-it Jan. 19 deadline.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has been outwardly supportive of the revolt. She cast a vote against the continuing resolution in December in the lower chamber.

She said then that DACA was only ‘one point’ in the dispute with Republicans that also involved military spending, funding for the opioid crisis and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP.

Of DACA, she said at a year-end press conference, ‘We’re going to continue the conversation because, again, it is a discrete piece of the issue that we want to deal with in a larger way in terms of comprehensive immigration reform, which we must address. ‘

Trump’s administration will open the new year with bipartisan talks with congressional leaders as it looks to tackle a legislative agenda that is more ambitious than the one it pursued his first year in office.

The president’s Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short and Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney will meet Pelosi, Schumer and the top two Republican lawmakers Wednesday on Capitol Hill for a conversation about a running tab of crises, including the January expiration of a stop-gap spending resolution and the plight of the illegal immigrants who have been calling the United States their home since they were children.

The president said this morning after watching a Fox & Friends segment on the border that his administration ‘will build the desperately needed WALL!’

Politico had earlier reported that the meeting would be held at the White House with Trump but a spokeswoman for the president said Tuesday afternoon that it would be on Capitol Hill and the president would not be attending.

Trump is hot off a trip to Florida for the holidays where he golfed almost every day with champs and once with a senator chasing the same immigration revamp he supports.

The president asserted from Florida last week that ‘Democrats have been told, and fully understand, that there can be no DACA without the desperately needed WALL at the Southern Border and an END to the horrible Chain Migration & ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration etc.’

‘We must protect our Country at all cost!’ he added.

Today Trump said from the White House that the wall will built as he feasted on morning television.

Before the holiday break, lawmakers were working on an immigration deal with Trump’s White House to save the Dreamers, build the wall and restructure the immigration system.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has committed to bringing the legislation to the floor — but only if the agreement comes to fruition by the end of January.

Hispanic Democrats have said they will not accept Trump’s conditions. Trump says he’s not budging, either.

Kellyanne Conway, counselor to Trump, said she was ‘disappointed’ by the lack of bipartisanship in 2017, particularly when the president has ‘always had that olive branch extended’ in a Tuesday morning Fox appearance.

‘This president is so accessible and so transparent on these policy prescriptions. He tweets about them almost daily … and so everybody knows where he stands on this. We hope they can come together for the good of the country, we’re ready,’ Conway said of immigration reform and DACA.

If legislation is not passed by March, Dreamers will become eligible for deportation when their existing paperwork expires. That’s when the Trump administration has said that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program they’re currently shielded by will come to an end.

The White House’s negotiating session with congressional leaders precedes a weekend of solo discussions between Trump and the top Republicans on Capitol Hill, McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, at Camp David.

The Camp David talks will be focused on nailing down a strategy for approaching the Republican leaders’ conflicting priorities.

First, they must push a long-term spending bill over the finish line. The resolution authorizing the government to keep the lights on runs out on Jan. 19.

A defense bill giving the Pentagon a raise blows through legal spending caps. The caps, which were part of the sequester, must be waived for the military to receive the money it was promised.

Hurricane relief and rebuilding efforts are also laying in wait as legislators haggle over the details of how emergency funds will be replenished.

There’s also the question of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which is on its last legs, and Obamacare, now that the GOP has repealed a provision of the law requiring every American to be covered or pay a fine.

The Republican tax reform overhaul axed the individual mandate, upending marketplaces that are balanced by the requirement that the young and old, healthy and sick must purchase health insurance.

Trump is claiming that legislators essentially repealed Obamacare with the blow, even through the rest of the law is still in place.

Bills to fully repeal and replace the federal health law have failed to check enough boxes to win over a majority of legislators, and now the GOP has a laundry list of other problems it must or would like to solve before this year’s midterm elections and one fewer vote to do it with.

Doug Jones’ win last month in the Alabama special election gives the GOP a slim 51-49 advantage over Democrats.

The White House has said it would like to conquer immigration repairs, an infrastructure package and welfare reform, likely in that order.

Trump’s wishlist will be previewed in his Jan. 30 State of the Union address, his first one since taking office.

‘January is going to be a busy month, undoubtedly. I think that there’s a lot of things that Democrats want in a budget deal, and DACA is one of those,’ a senior White House official said as the Trump administration closed out the year. ‘And I think as you look toward us unveiling a budget in February that will then kick off, kind of, the legislative calendar, there’s going to be a lot that we’re trying to do.’