President Trump blamed Democrats on Saturday for the deaths of two migrant children in detention at the southwest border this month, wielding the episodes as justification to fund a border wall.
The comments came in twin posts on Twitter, where the president spent much of the day denouncing Democrats as the partial government shutdown approached its eighth day over his demand for funding for the wall.
“Any deaths of children or others at the border are strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally,” he wrote in one message, his first public remarks about the deaths. “They can’t. If we had a wall, they wouldn’t even try!”
View the complete December 29 article by Maggie Haberman on The New York Times website here.