House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are demanding airtime for Democrats to respond to President Donald Trump's address on border security scheduled for Tuesday night.
Decrying Trump's past "misinformation" about his proposed border wall and related negotiations, the Democratic leaders said it was incumbent on TV networks to give their arguments equal exposure.
"Now that the television networks have decided to air the President's address, which if his past statements are any indication will be full of malice and misinformation, Democrats must immediately be given equal airtime," they said in a joint statement Monday night.
Earlier Monday, Trump wrote on Twitter that he would give a speech on what he called "the Humanitarian and National Security crisis on our Southern Border" from the Oval Office at 9 p.m. ET Tuesday. The tweet came after the New York Times reported the White House had reached out to TV networks requesting a primetime slot to broadcast the president's address on the border wall and ongoing government shutdown.
While networks have broadcast similar addresses in the past, it was not immediately certain they would grant the White House request. Broadcasters have pushed back on such requests depending on the gravity of the issue and the programming that would have to be interrupted.
By Monday afternoon, however, the major broadcast networks — NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox — said they had agreed to the White House's request for airtime. Cable networks CNN, Fox News and MSNBC will televise the address, as well.
Trump's address comes in the third week of a partial government shutdown over demands by the White House and some Republican allies that a 2019 Homeland Security spending bill include at least $5 billion for a wall on the southern border. Negotiations have made little progress — Democrats have unanimously rejected Trump's demand, and the president has said he will refuse to sign a spending measure without wall funding.
The border wall has been the centerpiece of Trump's border security agenda since the campaign, and he has come to view the ongoing spending negotiations as his last chance to secure funding for it during this term. A newly installed Democratic House majority, on the other hand, has little incentive to give Trump a win on an issue that is nearly universally hated by liberal voters.
In their statement Monday, Pelosi and Schumer called on Trump to end the shutdown and support House-passed spending bill similar to one that passed a Republican-controlled Senate by voice vote last month.
"President Trump keeps rejecting the bipartisan House-passed bills, which have already received strong bipartisan support in the Senate, to re-open the government," the Democratic leaders said. "Instead, he is still demanding that American taxpayers pay at least $5.7 billion for his wall, which can't pass either chamber of Congress and of course Mexico is not paying for."
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