US President Donald Trump said he is willing to risk a budget crisis in order to honor a campaign pledge to build what he called an “absolutely necessary” wall along the US-Mexico border.
“If we have to close down the government, we are building that wall,” Trump said Tuesday night during a campaign-style rally at the Phoenix Convention Center. He added that in electing him last November, the American people “voted for immigration control.”
Funding for the wall will need to be approved by the US Congress, which has not yet completed work on a budget for the U.S. government for fiscal 2018, which begins Oct. 1. Congressional Democrats oppose the idea of the wall, prompting Trump on Tuesday night to label them as “obstructionist.”
The president also used his rally speech to go on an extended tirade against the media, equating reporters with traitors calling them “bad people who “don’t like our country.”
Trump recited previous statements he made criticizing neo-Nazis, white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan following the fatal August 12 clash in Charlottesville, Virginia. But he omitted the most controversial words he used to blame the violence “on both sides.”
Trump also accused the media of not reporting his comments.
“Did they report I said racism is evil?”
“No!” the crowd loudly replied.
“I’m a person who wants to tell the truth,” Trump declared. “I’m an honest person.”
Arizona’s two Republican US senators, who have both clashed with the president, skipped the event. Trump criticized both John McCain and Jeff Flake without mentioning their names.
Trump’s presence in the Western state, where he beat Democrat Hillary Clinton by 3.5 percentage points in last year’s presidential election, drew tens of thousands of his supporters and protesters to downtown Phoenix, and intense precautions by security forces hoping to prevent violence.
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