DPCC Chair Cicilline: The President Is Violating His Oath of Office
WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman David Cicilline, Chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC), appeared on CNN Right Now With Brianna Keilar to discuss how President Trump is violating his oath of office by declaring a national emergency at the southern border. Cicilline highlighted that the President shouldn't use national emergency power simply because he lost at the negotiating table. Below are excerpts from the interview. Click here to watch the video.
"It is very clear that there's no national emergency. Illegal border crossings at the southern border are at a 40-year low. The President's own intelligence community when they testified before Congress doing their world threat assessment barely mentioned the southern border and certainly never said it was an emergency. So there's no factual basis for this. The President is violating his oath of office, violating the separation of powers, purporting to take money from military construction and counter narcotics work. So the very things he claims he's worried about he's taking money from those efforts to fund a wall. And you don't get to use emergency power simply because you lost at the negotiating table. We live in a democracy, the American people will decide how their money is spent and they decide that by electing people to the House and Senate who appropriate money. The President is not an imperial King who can issue an edict and overrule the Congress or circumvent the Congress. I think it's lawless, reckless, he's violating his oath of office and I don't think it'll be sustained in the courts. We're going to take action as Congress to do a resolution of disapproval. I hope our Republican friends will join us because this is really about the rule of law, about separation of powers, about Congressional authority, and it's important that Republicans join us in this effort, not just issuing statements but be certain they're voting in a way that makes it clear the President cannot do this on his own.
"There's no question all the President is attempting to do is create some political theatre and try to argue that somehow he's fighting for border security and nobody else cares about it. There was a bipartisan bill that helps to secure our border in a really smart way, that makes investments in e infrastructure at the ports of entry, in additional personnel, in additional investments that will provide barriers where appropriate. So there's a good bipartisan compromise. Democrats have been clear we're continuing to support investments in border security, we want to do it in a way that actually achieves the objectives, that makes sense, that experts say actually will work. You know empirical evidence, best practices. We reached a bipartisan effort to do it. The President made a campaign promise, this is sort of a bumper sticker: build a wall and, of course, Mexico was going to pay for it. And so we ought not be wasting tax payer money so the President can fulfill a campaign promise that he promised it was going to be a free wall. But the reality is he's going to keep trying to engage in this public fight. I think we have the responsibility to call him out and I hope our Republican colleagues will join us because this is a very dangerous precedent. If every time a President loses a negotiation or doesn't get his or her way, they think they can issue an executive order, we will have lost our democracy.
"The overwhelming amount of drugs come to this country through legal ports of entry. If we're serious about doing something about that, we need to make investments so there are cargo inspections and additional personnel so that our ports of entry can prevent the drugs from coming in the country. That's where they come. Again, the President keeps throwing out these statements which are not supported by the evidence, not supported by his own Department of Homeland Security or Customs and Border Patrol. What the border patrol agents tell, I've been to the border twice in the last year, what has changed they said it used to be single men coming, now it's mostly families often with children that are seeking asylum and fleeing violence and domestic violence abuse and all kinds of depravation. We need to respond to that in a humanitarian way but that's the change of circumstance that's happened at the border. There's not an emergency there. We have invested significantly in reducing the flow of drugs into our country. We want to do it in a way that actually works. The President is fixated on this border wall, this vanity project – a tribute to himself – that's not effective and won't achieve what it's trying to achieve. I think his own Republican Colleagues by voting for this compromise made the investments in things that will actually work."