Border Wall

"How do we get him to continue to talk about immigration?" Sam Nunberg once told Roger J. Stone Jr.

Congressional leadership staff from both parties arrived at the White House Saturday morning to meet with Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials to continue negotiating.

"We can call a national emergency because of the security of our country, absolutely. We can do it. I haven't done it, I may do it. I may do it, but we can call a national emergency and build it quickly, it's another way of doing it," said Trump.

"Steel is stronger than concrete," Trump told the reporter repeatedly.

The government shutdown enters its 14th day on Friday.

At the current rate of donations, it will take around 890 more days—or 2.43 years—to reach the ultimate $1 billion goal.

"Donald Trump has made a promise to the American people," Senator Lindsey Graham said. "He's going to secure our border."

The right-wing commentator, who was once such a staunch Trump supporter that she wrote a book titled "In Trump We Trust," has been increasingly critical of the president over his failure to build his long-touted barrier between the United States and Mexico.

"What we're unwilling to do is to pay a $5 billion ransom note for a medieval border wall that Trump wants to put forward that he initially said…that Mexico would pay for," New York Democrat Hakeem Jeffries told CNN.

Trump invited congressional leaders from both parties to the White House on Wednesday for a border security briefing, their first face-to-face meeting since the shutdown began 11 days ago.

"This is the president of the United States' signature domestic policy," Leland Vittert said.

O'Rourke's 48-second video against the president's border wall received more than 5 million views in 72 hours, outperforming many of the videos in Trump's own Twitter feed.

On the ninth day of the partial government shutdown, Trump used the Obamas' brick fence to justify building the border wall.

New fundraising page has been set up in response to hugely popular "We The People Will Fund the Wall" campaign

"They are spending so much time on Presidential Harassment," the president tweeted.

Only 19 percent of respondents in a new poll said $5 billion should be spent on the border wall.

President Donald Trump tweeted that he would close the border, end NAFTA and cut off foreign aid to three Central American countries if he does not get money for his wall.

Democratic leaders have vowed to solve the shutdown and usher in a new era of responsible government despite fraught relations with the Trump White House.

While claiming the incomplete border fortifications would form America's "last line of defense" against radical Islamists, the South Carolina senator offered no evidence that Islamic extremists had ever used the southern border to infiltrate the U.S.

"I don't care if you call it a slat, a fence, a wall — it's not happening," Fox News anchor Julie Banderas said.

"It's been more than a decade that we've had a child pass away anywhere in a CBP process so this is just devastating for us," Customs and Border Patrol commissioner Kevin McAleenan told "CBS This Morning" on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump used his Christmas morning call with U.S. troops abroad to reiterate his commitment to his partial government shutdown, adding that federal workers "want the wall."

The House and Senate are scheduled to reconvene for regular business Thursday at 4 p.m. and resume the process of hashing out a deal on border wall funding.

"If America were a business and the CEO was facing a dozen criminal and ethics investigations, multiple members of his inner circle had gone to jail, he was making rash decisions that prompted his top advisers to quit in protest and the company had to temporarily shutdown over failed internal business negotiations, what would happen?"

Mulvaney's public remarks, made on Fox News, further show that the president is prepared to have a shutdown that lasts through the holidays.

"In the land of common sense, we're not in it right now. The shutdown is because the president wanted to shut down," Republican Representative Ryan Costello said.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) reminded voters that Trump said Mexico would pay for a border wall, and declared that Democrats will not allow U.S. taxpayers to fund Trump's wall.

"We're in a shutdown because the president threw a tantrum about his border wall," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said.

"Mitch, use the Nuclear Option and get it done! Our Country is counting on you!" President Trump tweeted on Friday morning.

The lead-up to the midterm elections saw an uptick in misleading statements from the president.