Trump meeting with Senate GOP as shutdown deadline looms
President Trump will meet on Friday with Senate Republicans amid an impasse over border wall funding that is threatening a government shutdown.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the meeting will take place at 10:30 a.m. at the White House in order to “discuss the funding bill and the importance of border security.”
The huddle comes just more than 12 hours before funding for several government agencies is set to lapse.
{mosads}Trump on Thursday rejected a stopgap spending bill that would have funded the government through Feb. 8 because it did not contain funding for his long-desired wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The House, spurred on by Trump and conservative Republicans, passed a revised spending plan with $5.7 billion in wall funding attached. But Democrats in the Senate are expected to block the bill.
In a barrage of morning tweets, Trump urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to end the legislative filibuster in order to ram the border wall funding through the upper chamber with a simple majority.
“Mitch, use the Nuclear Option and get it done! Our Country is counting on you!” he wrote.
Trump also said Democrats would be to blame if the government shuts down, even though he said last week he would be “proud” to trigger a shutdown if funding for the border wall was not included in a year-end spending bill.
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