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Politics

11th Dec 2018

WATCH: Donald Trump threatens to “shut down the government” if border wall with Mexico is not funded

Rudi Kinsella

Trump Tower Obama

Quite a big statement.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to shut down the government over funding a US southern border wall in important budget talks with top Democrats.

In the White House on Tuesday, President Trump discussed border control with a number of leading Democrats.

Nancy Pelosi (the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives) and Chuck Schumer (the Senator from New York), engaged in a heated exchange with Trump, in which the President claimed that he would be “proud” to shut the government in order to achieve border security.

Pelosi posted a video of the conversation to her Twitter page, which sees Trump clearly state: “You know what I’ll say? Yes. If we don’t get what we want, one way or another, whether it’s through you, or through military, or through anything you wanna call it – I will shut down the government.”

According to the BBC, Trump also said, at another point in the conversation, he would be “proud” to do such a thing.

The infamous ‘wall’ was an extremely prominent element of Trump’s presidential election campaign, and he had promised that Mexico would pay for it, which Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto promised the country would not and would never do earlier this year.