President Trump said during a rally in Montana Thursday that if it were up to him, he would shut down the government if Congress fails to fund a wall, but said he’s unlikley to do that in order to boost the chances of a Republican success in November.
“We are getting the wall done, but I have so many people, good people, great people, they would rather not do it before, they would rather do it right after the election,” Trump said when asked before the rally whether he’d shut down the government if Congress doesn’t approve border wall funding. “They don’t want to do anything to upset the applecart. And my inclination — if it was up to me, I’d shut down government over border security.”
“Most likely, I will not do that,” he said, adding that he doesn’t want to do “anything that’s going to hurt us” going into the election.
EXCLUSIVE: @POTUS shares his message with @PeteHegseth ahead of his rally in Montana pic.twitter.com/wKXbJloWWH
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) September 7, 2018
Before Trump was able to answer his question on building the wall at the southern border, the crowd began changing, “Build that wall!”
Trump said close to $3.2 billion has been spent on constructing the wall so far, but said that a lot of Republicans wanted to wait until after the 2018 midterm elections to continue wall funding talks and construction.
“I have the commitment from Mitch Mcconnell, from Paul Ryan, from everybody. We do it right after the election where hopefully, frankly, it will be easy because we have more Republicans, not less,” Trump said.
