The government in America has shut down. As they say in boxing, there's a full clinch between President Trump and Congress. Nobody knows what it'll lead to. Both sides resemble two goats on a log over a river, as in the children's fairy tale. They're locking horns with each other. However, in reality, everything is much more serious. Trump is threatening to declare a national emergency. The opposition, in this case, is threatening to impeach him for the usurpation of power.
Our staff reporter in the USA, Valentin Bogdanov, has the details.
The shutdown broke the record. The US federal government hasn't been working for 23 days. Under Donald Trump, it's already been two days longer than it was under Bill Clinton.
"This night, the government shutdown has become the longest in US history. Here's what I heard when I called the White House before the program began".
"We apologize but due to the lapse in federal funding, we are unable to take your call. Once funding has been restored, our operations will resume".
NBC's host didn’t get through to Trump. Dissatisfied federal employees, who aren't receiving money, try to shout out to the White House's host.
"We want to work with pay".
800,000 people are either working without pay or have been put on a forced leave of absence. In Alabama, an entire city, the US space and rocket center Huntsville, was deserted due to the shutdown. And at Miami Airport, Terminal G was closed. Its transportation security employees are responsible for checking passengers, have grown tired of waiting for paychecks and are taking sick leave en-masse. The US president won't fly to Davos due to the shutdown.
The budget crisis will affect the entire American economy. Losses are estimated to be over $1 billion.
National parks took the first hit. In Joshua Tree, California, which was left unguarded, tourists tread paths, litter, and break trees. The state of New York has been funding the Statue of Liberty from its own budget so far. But there isn't any money left for Hamilton's Home in Harlem. At the gate, there's a van with a government license plate. The old shutters are closed.
The case of Alexander Hamilton New York museum that was closed due to shutdown (it's his portrait that's featured on the $10 bill) reflects both the reasons for the suspension of government funding and their consequences. Washington's right-hand man, the first US Treasury Secretary, Hamilton was an active supporter of a strong central government. Like Trump today, he advocated for protectionism. At the same time, Hamilton, who was born in the Caribbean, was, in fact, an immigrant, that is, to defend from whom the current US president proposes to build walls.
Against the background of the mansion's fence, this family from San Diego is taking photos. While the provincials strolled around New York, thousands of miles away crowds of migrants tried to cross the Tijuana border and break into their homeland. Fighters with shields lined up in a living chain, then used tear gas. Indeed, no one was poisoned. That was the script of large-scale exercises that were conducted by border guards in California, where these people are from.
Adrina Hopson, tourist: It's disappointing. We came just to look at it. He wanted to watch the game on Wednesday and touch the history but we can't do that.
- What's your forecast?
- No clue. Do you think that the shutdown will end soon?
- I don't know.
- We hope so.
Donald Trump flew to another hot spot in Texas, to the colleagues of the Californian border guards, last week. With honors, as Air Force One, they welcomed a helicopter landing on an improvised platform. He then listened to the opinion of experts and became even more invulnerable to critics.
Donald Trump: "They say that the wall is a medieval thing. What about the wheel? The wheel was invented much earlier than the wall. There are cars parked outside. I asked whether each of them has wheels. They all have them, but I thought they're medieval. There are just things that work. Wheels works. And walls works".
CNN correspondent Jim Acosta didn't seem to have conceived all of the advantages of the wheel, like the strength of the wall. Trump's constant critic, whose press pass to the White House was suspended, covered that presidential trip. With his race to the border, Acosta wanted to expose Trump, but rather, it turned out to be a self-exposure.
Jim Acosta, CNN correspondent: "This is the fence that the president was talking about. One can see Mexico on that side. As we walked along this wall, we didn't see any immediate threat, no migrants who would try to break through".
The White House Press Secretary promptly commented on the video. She derided Acosta.
"I never imagined that Jim Acosta would be there doing our job for us and clearly explaining why walls work. Thanks, Jim!"
Vesti Nedeli went to that fence in the suburb of McAllen, Texas, much earlier than CNN. Last autumn, our film crew walked along the fence, and our impressions were different. The steel fence there is only a few dozen feet long. On both sides of it are endless miles of a frail chain-link fence.
One can hardly call the border strip between Mexico and Texas an insurmountable obstacle. There's a small fence (it's easy to jump over it). Further back are bushes, and the Rio Grande river flows somewhere over there. It forms the border. Those houses are located in Mexico. In the bush, there's barbed wire strung by the American military. So far, these are the only traces of the presence of the contingent sent to the border by Trump.
Over the past few months, the military took a look around and now reported to the commander-in-chief on what they are dealing with. Unpleasant facts were revealed, as well. Tunnels began to appear where the wall is already built.
"Just two miles away from here, we discovered a tunnel. It's the second one over the recent period. They're dug under the wall".
It turns out that one can not only dig a tunnel under the wall. If one has time and tools, he can saw it through, too. NBC obtained secret photographs of the strength tests of all eight prototypes of the steel barrier, which the prototypes didn't pass.
Trump failed to have a private conversation with the leaders of the opposition last week. The US president put his foot down and left. To overcome the clinch, there's an option to declare a national emergency. Under a law from 1976, Trump, bypassing Congress, may allocate unused funds at his discretion. Trump compares the issue of illegal migration to a national disaster. Every fourth inmate in US federal prison is an illegal immigrant. In Texas alone, during the period of 2011 to 2018, they committed almost 300,000 crimes, 500 of them were murders. But the Democrats and their supporters can't put up with those figures and especially with the fact that Trump is the president even in the third year of his term.
- He manufactured this crisis to distract our attention from anything else, like Russia. Do you want to know from where they'll get money and who'll pay for the wall?
- You.
Of course, they won't allow distractions or be distracted from Russia. The shutdown will end sooner or later. But the issue of the so-called interference with elections remains something permanent in American politics. To continue this path, the New York Times decided to add more heat. With reference to their eternal anonymous sources, the newspaper reported that after FBI Director James Comey was fired, his subordinates launched their own investigation into Trump. Even before Special Counsel Mueller, they tried to find out whether the US president was an agent of Moscow. This is corporate solidarity.
"Get a piece of paper and write this down: one may not criticize the FBI. If you think that you were born in America and can do it, you shouldn't do it anyway. They'll launch an investigation against you. Anything could be the cause, from beating your wife, to betraying your country, or even being allies with Vladimir Putin".
The Washington Post has its anonymous sources, too. This newspaper accuses Trump of repeatedly hiding the details of his conversations with the Russian president from the members of the administration. They claim that after meeting with Vladimir Putin in 2017 at the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Trump took the notes from the interpreter who worked there and ordered that the incident not be discussed with anybody. It looks like that the Democrats in Congress waited for that pass from the newspaper. They're already threatening to hold special hearings. The US president thinks that billionaire Jeff Bezos is behind everything. Amazon's owner also owns The Washington Post. Trump called Fox News himself.
Donald Trump: "I met with Modi, I met with Abe in Japan, I met with everybody and nobody discussed it. But after I met with Putin, they made a big deal out of it. Everyone can learn what we discussed at the meeting. Everything is publicly available".
Meanwhile, there are more and more people who are ready to personally go up against Trump. Tulsi Gabbard claimed that she'll participate in the presidential race as a Democrat. She's a retired major of the National Guard representing Hawaii in the lower house, also known to have served in Iraq, and two years ago, during her trip to Syria, she met with Bashar Assad and even condemned America for the war it started there.
Another contender is Julian Castro, who worked as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Obama. But for a former civil servant and a descendant of immigrants from Mexico, the current shutdown is just a day in the sun, or just under the stars and stripes.
Valentin Bogdanov, Ivan Utkin, and Denis Lisitsyn for Vesti Nedeli from the USA.
