Trump says U.S. is “building a lot of wall right now”

President Trump signaled he could declare a national emergency in order to unilaterally obtain funding for the southern border wall he has long sought. Were he to declare a national emergency, he told reporters, “You’ll hear the State of the Union and let’s see what happens,” and he instructed them to “listen closely” to the address on Tuesday.

He said he’s looking at declaring a national emergency because he doesn’t believe that conferees will make a deal on border security funding. “I don’t think Democrats want border security,” he said Friday.

“We’re building the wall. It’s going to get built one way or another,” Mr. Trump said at the White House during an event on human trafficking at the southern border. He added that the administration was working on a plan for a better and “far more beautiful wall.” He also claimed, without naming any politicians, that many Democrats “want the wall.”

“They think it’s good policy for 2020,” Mr. Trump said about Democratic opposition to the wall. And if Congress can’t reach a deal with funding for a wall, he said he thinks “there’s a good chance” he’ll declare a national emergency, so that he can unilaterally fund border wall construction.

In a Rose Garden address announcing the end of the government shutdown — which occurred because Mr. Trump refused to sign any bill that did not include funding for a border wall, but eventually capitulated without any money for it — the president also went into gruesome detail of women trafficked across the border with duct tape around their mouths.

“Women are tied up. They’re bound. Duct tape put around their faces, around their mouths. In many cases, they can’t even breathe. They’re put in the backs of cars or vans or trucks. They don’t go through your port of entry. They make a right turn going very quickly,” Mr. Trump said. However, several experts on human trafficking have never heard of such a case, according to the Washington Post.