Politico | Donald Trump wages intense but lonely campaign for his border wall
- The president has griped about a perceived lack of public support for his shutdown stance and Syria withdrawal plan from within his administration
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Eliana Johnson on politico.com on January 7, 2019.
Fighting a virtual one-man messaging battle for his border wall, US President Donald Trump is growing frustrated that he doesn’t have more public defenders in his shutdown fight with Congressional Democrats.
Even by the standards of a president who prefers to deliver his own message rather than outsource it to surrogates, Trump is putting an unusually personal stamp on the White House’s public relations campaign to win more than US$5 billion in border wall funding.
As the government shutdown dragged into its third week, with both sides conceding that little progress has been made in negotiations, the president announced that he will make the fight the subject of his first Oval Office address to the nation on Tuesday evening (Wednesday morning Hong Kong time).
The White House also said that Trump will also travel to the US-Mexico border on Thursday in what is guaranteed to be a media spectacle.
But a president who demands constant praise has a diminishing number of public defenders these days.
