CNN’s Chris Cuomo grilled Independent Senator Angus King Thursday, pressing him on why Democrats wouldn’t give Trump a border wall if he lets them have DACA.
“If anyone could make a deal on immigration reform…it would be this president,” Sen. King said during an interview. “Now, the question is what do we have to add to the DACA bill…in order to make it work on a bipartisan basis. I suspect it’s going to have something to do with border security, I suspect it’s not going to have something to do with a wall.”
Cuomo pushed back on the notion that Trump would not try to include the wall in an immigration deal with Democrats.
“But that’s not what we’re hearing,” Cuomo argued. “We’re hearing that it may involve the wall and that is certainly what the president would want. Sen. Markey said yesterday that any bill that has DACA and the wall in it is a nonstarter.”
“How do you feel about that?” Cuomo asked.
King agreed with Sen. Markey that a DACA bill tied to a border wall would be a “nonstarter.”
“But why?” Cuomo pressed. “Why is the wall so important to the left that, you know, it’s just a nonstarter no matter what else is in the offer?”
“I don’t consider it important…to me it’s not an ideological issue, it’s a practical issue,” King said, arguing that the border wall doesn’t make sense and is too expensive for Democrats to consider it part of a deal.
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