President Donald Trump’s first campaign rally of the 2020 presidential election cycle will take place in El Paso, Texas, less than 1000 feet away from the U.S.-Mexico border.
“As the president continues his fight to secure our border, there’s no better place to demonstrate that walls work than in El Paso,” Trump campaign COO Michael Glassner said in the announcement. Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale revealed on Twitter after the announcement that the rally would be less than 1000 feet from the border.
Join @realDonaldTrump in El Paso, Texas Monday, Feb 11, 2019. This rally will be held less than 1000 feet from the successful border fence that keeps El Paso safe! https://t.co/H8MSMxz0BN
— Brad Parscale (@parscale) February 6, 2019
The Trump campaign said that this would be the first Trump rally ever to take place in El Paso, Texas. Trump’s rally is particularly noteworthy not only because it is the first of the 2020 election cycle but because it comes just days before he is likely to declare a national emergency in order to build the border wall.
Trump said 11 days ago he would allow the government to reopen for three weeks while a bi-partisan committee tried to forge a solution that met with his demands, saying that if they could not come to a solution, he would declare a national emergency and build the wall with military funds. The president maintains his demand for $5.7 billion in border wall funding.
Trum appealed to Congress to pass border wall funding at the State of the Union address Tuesday evening saying “simply put, walls work and walls save lives. So let’s work together, compromise, and reach a deal that will truly make America safe.” The president’s appeal, however, is unlikely to yield any compromise deal in Congress — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi explicitly said she would not provide any funding before negotiations even began.