In an interview with “Fox News Sunday,” White House adviser Stephen Miller said President Trump was confident he could withstand any legal or legislative challenges to his declaration of a national emergency. Miller said that while Congress may have refused to appropriate the desired amount of money for the wall in this spending cycle, they had already given the Executive Branch all of the authority Trump needed to acquire the funds.
“They passed a law specifically saying the president could have this authority,” Miller told host Chris Wallace. “It’s in the plain statute. That’s the decision that Congress made, and if people don’t like that they can address it. But to my point that I made, this would not be even an issue if the president was invoking that statute to support some foreign adventure overseas. You and I both know that that presidents for years have engaged in one military adventure after another, not to mention the fact that we do operations to destroy drug fields in foreign lands in Afghanistan or in Colombia. And we can’t even deal with the criminal cartels operating on our border?”
Democrats have outlined their intention to pass a resolution of disapproval against the White House, but supporters of the president say there are enough pro-wall votes in the Senate to preserve Trump’s veto power. As for the courts, President Trump has already said that he’s confident his decision will ultimately prevail.
“So the order is signed and I’ll sign the final papers as soon as I get into the Oval Office,” Trump said Friday. “And we will have a national emergency and we will then be sued, and they will sue us in the 9th Circuit even though it shouldn’t be there, and we will possibly get a bad ruling, and then we’ll get another bad ruling, and then we’ll end up in the Supreme Court and hopefully we’ll get a fair shake and we’ll win in the Supreme Court just like the ban.”
Miller was similarly optimistic about the president’s chances of winning in court, telling Wallace that the subject of the order’s legality had already been settled by Congress.
“Obviously, the president is going to protect his national emergency declaration,” Miller said. “He’s going to protect his national emergency declaration — guaranteed. But the fact that they’re even talking about a resolution of disapproval shows you this is a statutory issue and a statutory delegation that Congress made.”
Miller said the president was doing nothing more than preserving the strength and security of the nation, in line with his constitutional oath.
“The bottom line is this: You cannot conceive of a nation without a strong, secure border,” Miller said. “It is fundamental and essential to the idea of sovereignty and national survival to have control over who enters and doesn’t enter the country.”
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