[King:] A warning from President Trump aired on TV today that could complicate the full spending debates in Congress. Any immigration bill that hits his desk, the President says, must include funding for the border wall if lawmakers expect him to sign it. Listen. This is Fox News this morning.
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] We actually have four different bills. Unless it includes a wall and I mean, a wall, a real wall and unless it includes very strong border security, there'll be no approvals from me. Because I have to either approve it or not. There are bills going through. I'm watching one or two of them. We'll see what happens. I think it's time to get the whole package. It's not such a big deal, right? It's time to get the whole package.
[King:] Can he get a whole package, the whole package? He's gotten very modest down payments of this wall funding because it's impossible to get the votes for the whole package. As we get closer to the election, can he find those votes?
[Kapur:] He can get the money for his wall. I think Democrats have already seated to that as part of a DACA deal. What he cannot get is cuts the legal immigration which he wants which have scuttled, you know, immigration negotiation and DACA deals I think for months now. He wants to eliminate the diversity of lottery. He wants to cut what he calls chain migration, which is family sponsorships for siblings, adult parents, adult children. Democrats are not moving on that. What's happening now is a group of moderate Republicans of the House are teaming up Democrats to subvert Paul Ryan and to push a vote on the House for they can do that with a discharge petition. My colleague Eric Watson reports that there are conversations happening now between those moderate Republicans and the leadership as long as the hard liners to see if Republicans can agree on a deal. Whether they can, I highly doubt it, because you're not going to get the hard liners to agree on citizenship without a whole bunch of restrictionist measures that cannot pass the House.
[King:] That has been the quick send of the last 10 to 15 years. I want you to listen more in this interview about the President's tone about the President we all know he campaigned on having a tough border. What other things that bothers the President is when you come to United States border, and you show up at the border, you can see a judge and apply for asylum. The President says he wishes it were different.
[Trump:] We're the only country essentially that has judges. They want to hire thousands of judges.
[Unidentified Male:] Yes
[Trump:] Other countries have it's called security people, people that stand there and say, you can't come in. We have thousands of judges and they need thousands of more judges. The whole system is corrupt. It's horrible. Whoever heard of a system where you put people through trials? Where do these judges come from? You know, a judge is a very special person.
[Unidentified Male:] Right.
[Trump:] How do you hire thousands of people to be a judge?
[King:] There is a competing view, that what makes America great is that if you are being yes, illegal immigration is wrong. And the President has every right to stand up and say we should be able to protect our borders. Let me start there. He has every right to say we should be able to protect our borders from illegal immigration. Of course, we should and of curse he should make his case and try to get the money. But the idea that if you are being persecuted somewhere, what people say makes America great, you can show up the border and say help and get to see a judge not a security person with a gun who send you away.
[Davis:] Right. And what the President is saying, you know, is so objectionable here is called due process for that particular process. There is And by the way, there are people, there are security personnel at the border, and he made sure now there are more of them because the National Guard is now backing up at the border at his orders. But there is a process when these people present themselves and say they have a credible fear of going back to their home countries, there is a process where by, you know, they get process and they register and they get a court date and they get to plead their case. And they figure out whether or not they should be allowed to stay. What he really objects to and what he is pointing to is the fact that, and it is a fact that, a lot of these people, when they do get their, you know, appointment to go and have their case heard, they disappear into the interior and often times do not return for that court date, and therefore, you know that's another source of illegal immigration. And he has really tried to get at that problem. It's really difficult to get at that problem. And one of the issues with what Sahil was talking about earlier is he wants this legislative package to include changes to that whole process, so that people arriving at the border would have to go through a totally different process or maybe have no process at all or no way of staying in the country if they were afraid credibly of going home.
[Kapur:] He wants to eliminate that right essentially people who come to the country and want to speak to a judge, want to make their case, have a right to be heard. He is not wrong that the United States has generous law in that regard. A lot of other countries don't have this. But, you know, that is reflective of what the United States claims to stand for, stand for people of all, you know, who are persecuted in all sort of ways based on their race, religion, what have you. The President wants to change that. He wants
[King:] Whatever your opinions at home or whatever your coverage skills here at the table, is there anyone who thinks this close to the election were going to negotiate a major immigration package and get it passed into law and signed by the President?
[Johnson:] They didn't do it months before the election, so I think as we get closer it's more and more unlikely to happen.
[Collins:] But we have seen the immigration be a boiling point for the President in recent weeks. It always has been one of his things but lately he has been furious about it. We saw him unload on the Department of Homeland Secretary recently. He's very angry about immigration which makes it even more unlikely happen.
[King:] Yes. Two political reflexes constant, immigration and trade issues.
[Unidentified Female:] It might pass the House.
[King:] Thanks for joining us in INSIDE POLITICS today. Wolf will start right after a quick break. Have a good day.