Dr Ben Margulies, expert in US and European politics, comments on Donald Trump's scrapping of plans to find funding for his border wall.

“Congress is considering a short-term appropriations bill to keep the government funded through October, and Trump had threatened to veto it unless it included funding for the border wall. Democrats are opposed on principle; Republicans in Congress had not wanted to deal with that issue right now. Some Republicans from states on the Mexican border aren’t huge fans of the wall anyway, since it will anger their Hispanic constituents and require the federal government to seize private land".

"Trump apparently decided a shutdown would do him more damage than Congressional Democrats, and decided to back down in return for a more general increase in defence and border policing budgets".

 

"I think a lot of Trump’s voters probably take the wall as a metaphor for “increased border security” and are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, so for the time being he should be OK with his own base, many of whom filter out negative coverage. Another spending bill has to be passed in October, so Trump can come back to it.”

Kim Ingram

Assistant Press Officer

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