Democrats thought they could always count on Barack Obama.
To this day, he is still the biggest name in the party.
But he made an awful mistake that came back to bite the Democrats.
Donald Trump is ramping up pressure on Democrats to accept five billion dollars in border wall funding to avoid a partial government shutdown.
Unless Congress passes a funding bill by December 21, thirty percent of the federal government will shutter.
President Trump views this moment as his best chance to secure funding for the wall before Democrats take control of the House on January 3rd.
As part of his campaign to rally the public to his side, Trump tweeted out a video of him speaking from the south lawn of the White House.
Trump noted that Democrats had supported funding for border fencing before.
The President stated that the only reason the Democrats opposed the wall now was out of their pure hatred for him.
“You know what? They only don’t want to do it because of me. We have to put the people ahead of politics,” The President explained to the American people. “We need to have the wall. We need border security.”
To back up his claim, Trump’s video included clips of a then-Senator Barack Obama explaining why America needed strong border security.
“We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked,” Obama had stated.
Trump followed up the clip of Obama by stating, “All along they’ve been supporting walls, and supporting fences, and supporting all sorts of border security.”
The President then hoisted the Democrats on their own petard and said, “We need to put people above politics. We need to have the wall.”
You can watch the full video below.
Let’s not do a shutdown, Democrats – do what’s right for the American People! pic.twitter.com/bZg07ZKQqo
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2018
Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders doubled down on this message.
Sanders said the real question in this debate was whether the Democrats “love the country more than they hate Trump.”
“But now that this president is championing the fight and trying to do what is right, you Democrats that simply won’t join in that effort. They voted for it in they voted for the wall and they have changed their minds. That is pretty clear,” Sanders stated in an interview on Fox News.
She added, “Democrats have to decide if they love our country more than they hate this president and so far we have seen no indication that they are willing to do that.”
What Trump and Sanders are saying about the Democrats motivation to oppose funding for the wall is 100 percent true.
The Democrats opposition is purely political.
A former Senator Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both voted for the Secure Fences Act of 2006.
That legislation provided for the government to build 700 miles of double-layered fencing along the Southern border.
The federal government failed to finish the job because Congress refused to appropriate the money.
But now Donald Trump is forcing the issue to come to a head.
And the possible upcoming government shutdown could settle this issue once and for all.
We will keep you up to date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
