President Trump said on Friday that he “didn’t need to” declare a national emergency but did it to speed up construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
“I want to do it faster. I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster,” Trump said during a press conference at the Rose Garden in the White House.
Trump acknowledged that he got $1.375 billion from Congress for roughly 55 miles of physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border but that he wasn’t satisfied with the amount, which is significantly less than the $5.7 billion that he requested.
“I’m not happy with it,” he said. “On the wall, they skimped.”
Trump used a press conference on Friday to insist that a national emergency was needed, arguing that there was an “invasion” along the country’s southern border.
But his statement that he didn’t “need to” use the emergency declaration comes as his decision is all but guaranteed to be challenged in court.
Democrats immediately seized on Trump’s remarks, with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) characterizing them as “unreal.”
“Mr. President, how can this possibly be an national emergency if you’re saying you don’t need to do it?,” Schumer asked in a tweet.
George Conway, the husband to White House advisor Kellyanne Conway, predicted that Trump’s words would be used in legal filings aimed at blocking the executive order.
“This quote should be the first sentence of the first paragraph of every complaint filed this afternoon,” he said in a tweet.