Television anchors from cable and broadcast news channels attended an off-the-record lunch at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, hours before President Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech on border security Tuesday evening.
Among those in attendance at the lunch were CNN’s Chris Cuomo and Fox News’ Bret Baier. The New York Times reported they were expected to have lunch in the White House’s Roosevelt Room.
Trump’s Oval Office speech is set to be televised by major networks such as CNN at 9 p.m., two days before Trump is planning to visit the Mexican border on Thursday amid a partial government shutdown resulting from a dispute over border wall funding.
Trump is expected to make the case for funds to build a border wall, and argue that the lack of border security has become a national crisis that affects the safety of all Americans. The White House has said Trump wrote the speech.
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Trump has long discussed building a border wall and has requested more than $5 billion in funding to build it, but Democrats have not agreed to such a proposal. In recent days, Trump has entertained the possibility of declaring a national emergency to direct military funding toward a border wall, but officials familiar with the president’s speech claim Trump is not planning to announce such an action.
The lack of any agreement has led to a partial government shutdown that has lasted more than two weeks and has affected about 800,000 federal workers.
