There’s what Donald Trump does, and what Donald Trump says.
Advertisement
The White House and Republicans had reportedly offered Democrats a Daca extension of up to three years in return for full funding of Mr Trump’s wall.
However, he added that “there were a lot of things I’m unhappy about in this bill”.
Trump had until midnight (Saturday afternoon NZT) to sign a bill or a government shutdown would ensue. And he agreed to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to the surprise of many national security officials. It provides funding for the hiring of more than 300 new Customs and Border Patrol agents. However, Democrats insisted that a path to citizenship be included in the deal.
“This was the last chance”, Reith said.
Perhaps for the president, the reasons are not precisely the abandonment of DACA, but the fact that the bill does not eliminate any of the programs or agencies that Trump longed to finalize, protects some priorities of the Obama era and even expands them.
Democrats had called on Republican leadership to bring to a vote on the House floor a range of proposals that would fix DACA.
Why Does Trump Want to Veto the Omnibus Spending Bill? The Democrats would not do it.
“Democrats and any interested Republicans should be working hard to put legislation together so they can tell voters, ‘Hey, we’re trying to work on this, ‘” Matt Barreto, the co-founder of research firm Latino Decisions, told Newsweek. “DACA recipients are contributing to every facet of Arizona and the nation’s economic and civic life, education, the military and the private sector”.
The bill provided $1.6 billion for border security and construction or fix of almost 100 miles (160 kilometers) of border fencing, but that was far less than Trump had been seeking. His reason – because it didn’t deal with immigration and didn’t have enough money for his border wall.
President Donald Trump just did something that I don’t think anyone was expecting. “We’re starting work on Monday on some new wall, but also fixing existing walls and acceptable fences”.
Trump’s notorious border wall was also not fully funded.
The near flip-flop on the spending bill caps yet another week of high drama at a White House that seems to lurch from crisis to crisis.
“But because of the incredible gains that we’ve been able to make for the military, that overrode any of our thinking”, he said at a hastily arranged news conference.
What followed next on Twitter sums up the mood in a country trying to figure out where Trump stood with the omnibus bill.
Trump announced Friday he had approved the spending package after saying the day before he would veto the legislation.
In a tweet on Friday morning Trump said he was displeased about immigration issues in the bill, even though the White House had given assurances on Thursday that he would sign it.
On Monday, when a program that temporarily shields such immigrants from deportation had been set to end, Dreamers held a sit-in at the national headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C., to shine a spotlight on what the youths describe as the Democrats’ betrayal of them.
The program protects from deportation almost 700,000 unauthorized immigrants who came to the USA as children. Trump rejected a deal with Democrats that would have protected Dreamers in exchange for $25bn for his wall.
Advertisement
Immigrant advocates ripped Trump’s apparent hypocrisy. Trump has never prioritized the welfare of immigrant youth. He indicates multiple times he is willing to compromise on DACA, despite some contradictions within the meetings, and says “when this group comes back – hopefully with an agreement – this group and others from the Senate, from the House, comes back with an agreement, I’m signing it”.
