Trump Is Aggressively Selling The Government Shutdown With A “Higher Purpose"

TSA Workers Are Calling In Sick To Work Jobs That Will Pay Them

This isn’t a sickout or an organized union action. Just like everyone else, TSA employees have to keep food on the table and pay their bills. The electric company and the heating bill don’t care about a border wall; bills still have to be paid. TSA employees are calling in sick so that they can work other jobs that will keep the lights on. In the post-9/11 era, it is the height of irresponsibility for any president to make America’s transportation systems less safe because he can’t keep his own campaign promise to make Mexico pay for the wall. Trump’s shutdown is jeopardizing national security, and if something deadly occurs, it will be Trump who will bear the consequences.

After a lonely holiday season at the White House, President Donald Trump is now aggressively selling the government shutdown, insisting he remains “proud” of his efforts to secure funding for a southern border wall and reminding federal workers affected by the funding lapse of a "higher purpose." In a Rose Garden address Friday afternoon that lasted more than an hour, Trump and Republican leaders did not announce a compromise or a path back to reopening the government. Instead, they said they would continue to negotiate with Democratic leaders over the weekend, with Trump adding he might also consider using national emergency powers to obtain wall funding if talks break down.

“They bring children, or even worse, they use children. You know children are the biggest beneficiaries of what we want to do,” he said. “Children are hurt more than anybody else. These coyotes, what they do with children — all because we have open borders, because they think they can get away with it.”

The president also brought up tackling human trafficking, keeping drugs out of the country, protecting young children, and keeping the country safe from terrorists as reasons for the wall, which he said could be made of concrete or steel. The messaging, with little evidence to support his claims, was similar to the dark rhetoric against undocumented immigrants he used during the 2016 campaign and ahead of the midterm election in talking about the caravan.

Friday's long Rose Garden address-turned-press conference by the president followed a meandering, 95-minute cabinet meeting on Wednesday, during which he kept cameras and reporters in the room to talk about the border wall and funding crisis. He also made an unannounced appearance at the White House briefing room on Thursday with border patrol agents to make a statement on the need for the border wall, but did not take questions. "Without a wall you can not have border security," Trump said on Thursday in the briefing room, insisting he had "never seen anything like" the support he was getting on the issue. "Without a very strong form of barrier, call it what you will, but without a wall you can't have border security it won't work."