The Democratic lawmaker described the partial government shutdown as a “failure of Republican leadership.”
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) has warned President Donald Trump that the only way “he’s going to get his wall is if Mexico funds it.”
Trump forced a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday over his insistence that the border wall be paid for by American taxpayers.
Lieu described the shutdown ― the third during Trump’s presidency ― as a “failure of Republican leadership.”
“Democrats are certainly happy to talk about border security, but we’re not going to build this stupid vanity wall of Donald Trump’s with U.S. taxpayer dollars,” he told MSNBC’s Alex Witt.
“Democrats and Republicans both support border security, and Donald Trump’s No. 1 campaign promise was not the wall, it was that Mexico would fund the wall.”
The prominent House Judiciary Committee Democrat added that Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall would be a waste of taxpayer money for “inefficient, wasteful technology.”
“Making America great again doesn’t mean using 19th century technology,” he said, referring to Trump’s campaign promise. “This is like building a big moat around America. We don’t do things like that anymore.”
