President Donald Trump issued the first veto of his presidency on Friday, rejecting a resolution passed by the House and the Senate that would have blocked his declaration of a national emergency on the border with Mexico.
He had consistently advocated for building a wall on the border by invoking various nefarious threats: terrorists, drug smugglers, criminals, gang members, human smugglers. This rhetoric, often disconnected from actual data, was not sufficiently compelling for Congress to authorize spending on the wall, so Trump decided to deploy an emergency declaration.
“People hate the word invasion, but that’s what it is,” Trump said, referring to the number of people crossing the border from Mexico into the United States.