President Donald Trump essentially advocated for another government shutdown to occur this week if lawmakers cannot agree to strengthen America's borders.
Trump addressed the topic during a roundtable discussion about how to deal with the deadly MS-13 gang with members of Congress and officials from the law enforcement and national security communities Tuesday afternoon.
"If we don't change the legislation, if we don't get rid of these loopholes where killers are allowed to come into our country and continue to kill … If we don't change it, let's have a shutdown," Trump said. "We'll do a shutdown. It's worth it for our country. I'd love to see a shutdown if we don't get this stuff taken care of."
Lawmakers have until the end of Thursday to pass a spending bill to keep the government funded. If no deal passes in both houses of Congress, the government will shut down — just as it did last month. Immigration and border security were at the center of that shutdown as well.
"So we have to strengthen our borders — not by a tiny bit, but by a lot. We are so far behind the times," Trump said. "And by the way, the world is laughing at us because they can't believe these policies. They don't have it. I could name 15 of them right now. No other country in the world has what we have. We're gonna get it stopped.
"If we have to shut it down because the Democrats don't want safety — and unrelated but still related, they don't want to take care of our military — then shut it down. We'll go with another shutdown."
Trump later tweeted on the subject:
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