MCALLEN, TEXAS: United States President Donald Trump even doesn’t know thelocation of Pakistan.
He on Friday called Pakistanis ‘people from Middle East’ in his argument tobuild a wall along his country’s Mexican border and step up the ante in adrawn-out battle with Congress over release of funds amid a governmentshutdown.
Trump flew to the Texas border with Mexico on Thursday to try to bolsterhis case for the border wall as the government shutdown tied to the issuestretched into its 20th day with no sign of new talks to resolve theimpasse. The shutdown will be the longest in US history if it is stillgoing on by Saturday.
Flanked by border agents who are going without paychecks Trump threatenedto use emergency powers to bypass Congress to pay for the wall on theUS-Mexico border. “We can declare a national emergency. We shouldn’t haveto,” Trump told reporters. “This is just common sense.”
Read Top Stories
According to Daniel Dale, Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star,when a border patrol official told the US president that they hadapprehended people from multiple countries including Pakistan, Trump asked,“How many Pakistanis?” The man said “two.”
Then, after he finished talking, Trump said: “So they apprehended peoplefrom the Middle East.”
