Some of President Trump’s most ardent supporters say he failed to lead a push in Congress for border wall funds and risks fracturing in his 2016 coalition if he can’t secure funds this week for his most well-known campaign promise.
After significant pressure from his political base, Trump told House Republican leaders on Thursday that he would not sign a temporary spending bill that passed the Senate without Mexico border wall funds. His veto threat could lead to a partial government shutdown Friday.
Senators have left Washington for the Christmas holiday, making it difficult to craft and pass a spending deal with wall funds — and pro-Trump political observers say the president risks dire political consequences if he cannot somehow secure wall funds.
Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., who supports wall funding, told the Washington Examiner he believes signing a spending bill without wall funds could be a “Humpty Dumpty” moment for the Trump electoral coalition, disillusioning a core constituency.
“Right now, the line in the sand is like the Alamo; you can’t straddle it,” Gosar said. “This is what he ran on; this is what he won on.”
Gosar said he would not place the blame entirely on Trump, but that the political fallout could be similar to former President George H.W. Bush’s failed promise not to raise taxes. “Read my lips, no border wall,” the congressman said, modifying the infamous Bush pledge into a possible anti-Trump attack.
“Without a wall, it’s hard to imagine his base turning out at 2016 levels to get him re-elected in 2020,” a former White House official told the Washington Examiner. “There’s a not an insignificant amount of people who voted for a wall first in 2016, not necessarily for Trump.”
Policy advocates say Trump has let them down, forcing last-minute brinkmanship due to a failure to negotiate with lawmakers following televised Oval Office arguments last week with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
“In working with Congress, he either doesn’t have the skills at negotiation he claims, or he doesn’t believe in the promises he made,” said Roy Beck, founder of NumbersUSA, an advocacy group that favors reduced immigration.
Beck said that Trump’s wall-supporting base may not be forgiving if the border barrier funds are not produced. “My sense in politics is that once the bloom is off the rose, it’s hard to get that bloom back on,” he said.
R.J. Hauman, government relations director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, a group that seeks to reduce immigration, said the Trump White House was AWOL on Capitol Hill, allowing the policy priority to languish.
“Being up here on Capitol Hill, it’s very obvious when the White House or an administration in general truly leans in to a legislative effort,” Hauman said. “We clearly saw that with tax reform. [Vice President] Mike Pence was at the Capitol almost every day. Administration officials were blanketing the airwaves. And you could really tell there was a full-court press effort. We haven’t seen that on the immigration issue at all. And it’s very surprising when that was the president’s signature campaign issue and what propelled him into office.”
“You’d think border security and immigration as an issue would deserve the same type of attention and effort [as tax reform], but it has not,” Hauman said, adding that “it’s been a mistake of the White House to outsource [its] policy agenda on immigration to establishment Republicans who don’t have your same worldview.”
Ira Mehlman, media director at FAIR, said “clearly this is something that should have been dealt with long ago.”
But Mehlman cautioned that Trump might still put up a fight. “We have to wait for him to give us the final word or the final tweet,” he said.
Congressional immigration hawks aren’t throwing in the towel yet. The House Freedom Caucus, which represents about three dozen conservatives, continues to push for border barrier funds. HFC Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., and co-founder Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, were among the handful of Republican members who met with Trump at the White House Thursday.
And Trump may gain some reprieve if he sticks to his decision not to sign the funding bill.
“If he signs an extension to February, his base will see it as a complete cave. We have a united Republican government now, and wall funding won’t get easier when the Democrats take the House,” said a conservative House aide who works closely with the Freedom Caucus. “Even if the government shuts down, he will at least have shown he’s willing to truly fight on the issue — if he signs the [continuing resolution] people will see it as weakness.”
