WASHINGTON — While a deal to fund the government this week won’t necessarily include funding for the construction of a complete border wall, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on Sunday said there will be "enough to get going" — even as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called it "immoral."
Asked by "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd in an exclusive interview whether the Trump administration would push a government shutdown if border wall funding is not included in a bill to fund the government this week, Priebus said, "it will be enough in the negotiation for us to either move forward with either the construction or the planning or enough to get going with the border wall."
Members of Congress are returning to the nation's capital this week with a nearing deadline to work on a deal to continue government funding and avoid a government shutdown.
Democrats meanwhile are standing firm against funding construction of a border wall.
"Democrats do not support the wall," Pelosi, D-Calif., said on "Meet The Press."
"Republicans in the border states do not support the wall."
“The wall is, in my view, immoral, expensive, unwise, and when the president says, 'Well, I promised a wall during my campaign.' I don’t think he said he was going to pass billions of dollars of cost of the wall on to the taxpayer," she added.
Pelosi argued that "the president is expressing a sign of weakness" by wanting a wall to stem the flow of illegal immigrants from crossing the southern border.
Priebus said the administration expects “the priorities of the president to be reflected” when Congress makes a deal on funding government operations.
"We expect a massive increase in military spending, we expect money for border security in this bill, and it ought to be because the president won overwhelmingly and everyone understood that the border wall was part of it," he said.
Despite Priebus' claim, Trump infamously lost the popular vote, and, since Richard Nixon's election in 1972, only two presidents — George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter — have received fewer electoral votes than Trump in a general election.
Late Sunday morning, Trump took to Twitter to speak on the wall, first claiming that the wall is needed to stop "MS 13 gang members," then saying that "Mexico will be paying, in some form" eventually.
