House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Tuesday dismissed President Trump’s Oval Office address on border security as an effort to “stoke fear” among Americans and accused him of playing up a “manufactured crisis.”
“Most presidents have used Oval Office addresses for noble purposes,” said Schumer, in a televised rebuttal to Trump. “This president just used the backdrop of the Oval Office to manufacture a crisis, stoke fear, and divert attention from the turmoil in his administration.”
[WATCH: Democratic leaders respond to Trump’s prime-time address]
Schumer and Pelosi rejected Trump’s call for tougher border security and instead called on Trump to agree to sign seven lapsed spending bills that would reopen about 25 percent of a now partially shuttered government. In exchange, Schumer promised, “we can resolve our differences over border security.”
But the biting criticism delivered by Pelosi and Schumer in their brief rebuttal to Trump show the two sides remain miles apart.
Pelosi called Trump’s demand for up to $5.7 billion in wall funding “his obsession with forcing American taxpayers into wasting billions of dollars on an expensive and ineffective wall — a wall he said Mexico will pay for.”
The two Democrats said they would agree to additional border security at the nation’s ports and through technology and additional agents, but not a wall.
“We can fund more innovation to detect unauthorized crossings,” Pelosi said.
The Democrats will join GOP leaders at the White House Wednesday to again seek a deal on border security that will lead to an agreement on government spending.
