President Trump said he believes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is “very bad for our country.”
Referring to negotiations with Pelosi on border security, Trump said the California Democrat is refusing to support his demand for border wall funding for political reasons.
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“Well, I think that she was very rigid — which I would expect — but I think she’s very bad for our country,” Tump said in an interview with CBS. “She knows that you need a barrier. She knows that we need border security. She wanted to win a political point. I happen to think it’s very bad politics because basically, she wants open borders. She doesn’t mind human trafficking or she wouldn’t do this.”
Pelosi responded through her deputy chief of staff Drew Hammill: “The President knows, bluster aside, that Democrats are committed to securing our borders while upholding our values as a nation. The President should stop undermining bipartisan efforts to do just that.”
The CBS interview, conducted Friday in the White House, will air in full on “Face the Nation” Sunday morning.
In about two weeks funding from a stopgap spending bill that ended the 35-day partial government shutdown expires. A bipartisan group of more than a dozen House and Senate lawmakers began meeting last week in an effort to strike a deal on border security and federal funding by a Feb. 15 deadline.
Trump remains insistent that any long-term deal includes $5.7 billion for a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border while Democrats refuse to consider it.
“There’s not going to be any wall money in the legislation,” Pelosi told reporters last week. She did say, however, she could support a border security deal that adds new Normandy fencing along about 30 miles of open border.
If a deal is not reached, Trump has threatened to use a national emergency declaration to divert military funds for his border wall plan.
