Trump tries to claim border wall win in budget deal

President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed that the government funding deal reached on Capitol Hill over the weekend includes a “down payment on the border wall,” even though the legislation specifically does not allocate money for such a wall.

At a ceremony ostensibly dedicated to honoring the Air Force Academy’s football team, Trump devoted a significant portion of his remarks to claiming policy victories in the deal reached to avert a government shutdown. Telling the crowd that his “Republican team had its own victory under the radar,” Trump claimed that Democrats had misled Americans about the nature of the funding compromise.


“We have more money now for the border than we've gotten in ten years. The Democrats didn't tell you that. They forgot. In their notes, they forgot to tell you that. With enough money to make a down payment on the border wall,” Trump said with blue-uniformed Air Force cadets standing behind him. “we're putting up a lot of new wall in certain areas. We're putting up a tremendous amount of money to fix the existing structures that we have, some of which we can keep into the future.”

“And make no mistake, we are beginning to build the wall,” he continued.

But while the funding deal does include significant funding for border security, it does not contain money for Trump’s long-promised border wall, a point over which Democrats were seemingly prepared to force a government shutdown. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the Senate Appropriations Committee’s ranking member, quickly chimed in on Twitter to note that, “To be clear, there is NO funding in this bill for ANY kind of down payment on construction of a new border wall.”