In response to Donald Trump's (purely political, brazenly partisan) “immigration crisis” address tonight, which the networks were indeed stupid to have agreed to air, Democratic leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave a joint rebuttal to Trump's claims.
“Sadly, most of what we have heard” has been “full of misinformation,” said Pelosi, noting that the House had already voted to re-open the government. “His obsession to force American taxpayers to waste billions of dollars for a wall he promised millions of Americans Mexico would pay for.”
She also noted that women and children at the border “are not a national security threat,” but “a humanitarian challenge.”
Sen. Schumer: "We address you tonight for one reason only: the president of the United States—having failed to get Mexico to pay for his ineffective, unnecessary border wall, and unable to convince the Congress or the American people to foot the bill, has shut down the government."
“American democracy doesn’t work that way. We don’t govern by temper tantrum.” Schumer asked Trump to separate the shutdown from his border debate and to re-open the government. “Most presidents have used Oval Office addresses for noble purposes,” said Schumer. “This president just used the backdrop of the Oval Office to manufacture a crisis, stoke fear, and divert attention from the turmoil in his Administration.”
There were no new ideas or proposals in Trump’s speech, and Trump’s lies were so predictable that news organizations were able to prepare fact-checks of many of those claims in advance.