Several top Democrats have borrowed one of California Sen. Kamala Harris’s campaign lines comparing President Trump’s border wall to a “medieval vanity project.”
Sens. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Jack Reed of Rhode Island penned a letter condemning Trump for reappropriating military funds away from the European Defense Initiative to instead be spent on the southern border wall. The European Defense Initiative is a project to bolster European countries against foreign threats, including “Russian aggression.”
In their letter to Trump, the Democratic senators claimed the president was putting Europe at risk to fund a “medieval vanity project.”
“Nearly $1.3 billion, including $700 million designated by Congress for the European Defense Initiative (EDI), will be diverted from confronting one of our greatest national security challenges—all to fund a medieval vanity project that was supposed to be paid for by Mexico,” they wrote.
Other prominent Democrats have previously called the southern border wall a “medieval vanity project.” The line has also been part of Harris’s campaign stump speech, which the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate first used against Trump in January and has continued to repeat throughout her campaign.
There was a bipartisan effort out of the House and Senate to fund the government, and the president is holding it up because of his vanity wall project, all at the expense of taxpayers and hundreds of thousands of workers. It’s an emergency of his own creation. pic.twitter.com/uu2SwO4Z3b
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) January 8, 2019
Congress did not appropriate these funds for Trump’s medieval vanity project. Let’s be clear: Trump’s wall has never been about keeping the American people safe. https://t.co/tlZ9GRp7Wd
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 27, 2019
Harris has been a top-five candidate in the crowded field of Democrats since entering the race; however, she has struggled to break above 5% support in several recent polls.
