“Why don’t you declare that emergency, Mr. President?”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi warned President Donald Trump that if he declares a national emergency to finance and build his border wall a Democratic president will have no problem declaring a national emergency to address school shootings and the “epidemic of gun violence in America.”
President Trump, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, will declare a national emergency to build his wall when he signs the bill funding the government and averting a shutdown.
“First of all, it’s not an emergency,” the Speaker told reporters late Thursday afternoon, referring to Trump’s desire to fulfill his campaign promise to build a wall – despite also having promised Mexico would pay for it. “The president has tried to sell a bill of goods to the American people.”
She accused President Trump of trying to make an “end run” around Congress, bypassing the Constitution’s mandate that Congress, and specifically the U.S. House of Representatives, holds the nation’s pursestrings.
“If the President can declare an emergency on something he has created as an emergency – an illusion that he wants to convey – just think of what a President with different values can present to the American people,” she warned.
“You want to talk about a national emergency? Let’s talk about today: The one-year anniversary of another manifestation of the epidemic of gun violence in America. That’s a national emergency. Why don’t you declare that emergency, Mr. President?”
In the year since 17 people, 14 of them students, were shot to death in Parkland, Florida at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school, nearly 1200 more have died in mass shootings.
Watch Speaker Pelosi’s remarks: