Getty House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.
After the four major networks decided to give President Trump the opportunity to address the nation during prime time at 9 p.m. Eastern Tuesday night, the Democrats were able to secure time of their own to offer a rebuttal. House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer gave the response together. You can watch Trump’s address here.
During the response, Pelosi said the House has passed Senate Republican legislation to re-open the governement and fund ” smart, effective border security solutions,” but said Trump is “rejecting these bipartisan bills which would re-open government – over his obsession with forcing American taxpayers to waste billions of dollars on an expensive and ineffective wall – a wall he always promised Mexico would pay for!”
Schumer said, “The symbol of America should be the Statue of Liberty, not a thirty-foot wall. So our suggestion is a simple one: Mr. President: re-open the government and we can work to resolve our differences over border security. But end this shutdown now.”
You can watch the Democrats response to President Trump’s prime time address below:
Sources told the New York Post that Pelosi and Schumer did not prepare a script for their response. “Both Pelosi and Schumer know their foundational argument but will firm up their rebuttal in real time because of uncertainty surrounding where President Trump may lead the American people,” a source close to the preparations told the newspaper.
In a Tuesday statement from Pelosi and Schumer, the Democratic leaders said, “Democrats and an increasing number of Republicans in Congress have repeatedly urged the President and Leader McConnell to end the Trump Shutdown and re-open the government while Congress debates the President’s expensive and ineffective wall. Unfortunately, President Trump keeps rejecting the bipartisan House-passed bills.”
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told The Washington Post on Tuesday, “There is an opportunity for every American to see who wants government open and our responsibility is not to do what the president the United States tells us to do. Our responsibility is to do what we think is in the best interest of the American people and the effective and efficient operations of their government.”
Hoyer said if Trump follows through on a threat to declare a national emergency and use the military to build the wall without funding from Congress he could be abusing his powers.
“I think it is analogous to governments that we’ve seen all over the world declaring martial law and justifying them in doing whatever they wanted to do to whomever they wanted to do it whenever they wanted to do it,” Hoyer told reporters, according to The Post. “We don’t think that’s the American way. We don’t think that’s the constitutional way.”
While Trump has said people want a wall, polls show that isn’t true. A majority of Americans oppose the wall and also want the shutdown to end. The partial government shutdown is now the second longest in U.S. history.
In their statement, Pelosi and Schumer said about Trump’s Oval Office address, “If his past statements are any indication,” then Trump’s speech “will be full of malice and misinformation.”