President Trump and his administration are signaling that they may fold on the requested funding for the border wall in order to keep the government open.

Sarah Sanders suggests a backing down on the wall

This morning, we reported that the Trump White House has been strangely silent on its demand for congressional Republicans to fund the $5 billion price tag for a wall along the U.S.’s southern border. (RELATED: President Trump Not Giving Senate Republicans Direction on Shutdown.) Senate Republicans, specifically, have been waiting on the President to let them know if he’s standing firm or backing down.

Unfortunately, it appears Trump is about to back down. CNBC reports:

“We have other ways that we can get to that $5 billion that we’ll work with Congress,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Fox News on Tuesday morning. She added that the Trump administration could support $1.6 billion in border security funding proposed by Senate Democrats, as long as it can “couple that with other funding resources” to get to $5 billion. She added that “at the end of the day, we don’t want to shut down the government. We want to shut down the border.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have cast the potential lapse in funding as the “Trump shutdown.” When Pelosi goaded Trump into an Oval Office fracas last week, the characterization appeared to irritate the president.

White House suggests it could back down on $5 billion border wall demand https://t.co/9CvXSO1vBh — CNBC (@CNBC) December 18, 2018

Here is the Sanders interview:

Trump Administration previously signaled willingness to bend

Yesterday, we reported that there was sense of waffling within the White House on a spending deal. (RELATED: Trump Considers Delaying Border Wall Fight Until January.) The truth is, if Trump doesn’t win this fight now, he’s not going to win it when Democrats take control of the House of Representatives in January. This is Trump’s one last chance to get the wall funding from Congress. Otherwise, he’s going to have to raid military funding to pay for it, which, as of now, has not been cleared legally.

Either way, Trump’s entire first term as president will be marred by the fact he couldn’t get his top priority done, even with a Republican Congress. This ignominy of this failure will be hard to live down when campaigning in 2020.