So, Did Paul Ryan Screw Us Out Of A Border Wall When He Became A Lame Duck?

Matt Vespa / Townhall Tipsheet

The fight over President Trump’s border wall will probably lead to another shutdown by February 15^th. It’s also very possibly Trump whips out the national emergency card to get it done while risking Democrats going apoplectic over this move. Whatever the case, House Democrats aren’t playing ball. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said repeatedly that not one penny will go to a border wall. This is a critical campaign promise. Trump’s 2016 campaign was grounded in building a border wall. Walls work. The Border Patrol knows they work. In fact, those who have been dealing with immigration enforcement know there’s been a border crisis for years, despite most liberal media outlets saying otherwise. The Washington Post’s coverage of Virginia Democrats pushing a bill that would virtually legalize infanticide has been trash, but they did report that Trump was right a crisis developing at the border. The New York Times also reported on it. The government was shut down for over 30 days over this issue before Trump caved and re-opened the government. Now, we’re back to where we were prior to Christmas over the funding, a mere $5.7 billion for just part of the barrier.

There is no question barriers work to decrease illegal traffic.
- San Diego (built 1992): Dropped 92%
- El Paso (built 1993): Dropped 95%
- Tucson (built 2000): Dropped 90%
- Yuma (built 2005): Dropped 95%

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) January 12, 2019

 Some are wondering why didn’t we appropriate the money for the wall when the GOP controlled government. The Daily Caller’s Saagar Enjeti and Vince Coglianese sat down with President Trump for an interview, where the wall funding was brought up. President Trump said then-Speaker Paul Ryan promised to get him the wall funding but didn’t. It was when the president signed the $1.3 trillion omnibus last March. Trump wanted to veto it but decided to sign it because of the increased military funding and because Ryan told him, “we’ll get you the wall” (via Daily Caller) [emphasis mine]:

THE DAILY CALLER: Well the people who elected you are very interested in the immigration decision and what’s going on with this negotiation. Republicans in charge of Congress for two years didn’t get to your wall promise in Congress. How big of a roadblock to wall funding was Paul Ryan now that he’s gone?

POTUS: Well, I was going to veto the omnibus bill and Paul told me in the strongest of language, ‘Please don’t do that, we’ll get you the wall.’ And I said, ‘I hope you mean that because I don’t like this bill,’ although I love the bill for what it did for the military. And therefore, if it weren’t for the military I would have vetoed it.

Just so you understand, our military needed funding desperately. Totally depleted. And this bill was great for the military. Had I vetoed it, you would never have gotten the numbers back that I got: $700 and $716 billion over the last two years. Which is substantially more — much more than President Obama was able to get for the military.

So that was a negative but a big factor as to why that was the reason I signed it. But another very big factor was the fact that Paul told me in the strongest of terms that, ‘please sign this and if you sign this we will get you that wall.’ Which is desperately needed by our country. Humanitarian crisis, trafficking, drugs, you know, everything — people, criminals, gangs, so we need the wall.

And then he went lame duck. And once he went lame duck it was just really an exercise in waving to people and the power was gone, so I was very disappointed. I was very disappointed in Paul because the wall was so desperately needed. And it is. And I’ll get the wall.

THE DAILY CALLER: Did he lie to you? Did he play you?

POTUS: I don’t want to say he lied. I think he probably meant it at the time, I guess. I hope. So I don’t call that lying. But when he went lame duck, meaning, he said he’s not running again — and it was very unusual because usually they’ll do that sometime after an election and he didn’t want to do that because it’s somewhat misrepresenting and I understand that too. But maybe you don’t run, okay? Maybe you just don’t run. And he had an excellent person taking his place in Congress, he ran a great campaign, did a really good job.

So Paul said, ‘please sign the omnibus bill.’ Now, in all fairness to Paul, I may have signed it anyway because it was so much more money than anyone ever thought possible for the military, and equal to the wall and maybe even greater than the wall was my promise to refurbish the military.

 So, in other words, it was a case of “all talk, no action.”