From The Daily Mail: “The possibility of diverting Pentagon funding and assets to build a border wall is a hole card the president is holding but has never directly acknowledged before. “Two Defense Department officials told DailyMail.com in August that the Army Corps of Engineers could take on the task.
“‘They build levees that hold back massive walls of water,’ one said of the agency. ‘They can build one to hold back drugs and human traffickers.’
“The White House appears headed for another confrontation with Congress over an increase in funding for the project after securing $1.6 billion for 2007 and the same amount for this year. “A senior White House official said Thursday that the money was ‘basically a down-payment on the thing’.
“The possibility looms that the president will refuse to sign the next federal budget, due September 30, if lawmakers don’t go along with more installments. That would trigger a government shutdown. “‘If it were up – I don’t want to say “up to me,” because it is up to me – I would do it,’ he said aboard Air Force One, ‘because I think it’s a great political issue.’
“But he said some Republicans in Congress, facing tough re-election fights, have counseled more patience.
“‘They have races, they’re doing well, they’re up,’ Trump explained. ‘And you know, the way they look at it: might be good, might be bad.’
“Typically the party in power, in this case, the GOP would shoulder most of the blame for interrupted government services. National security and military operations wouldn’t be affected.”
During Trump’s rally in Billings, Montana last week, he told a Fox News Channel interviewer that “we need Republicans elected in the midterms. We are getting the wall done. But I’ve had so many people, good people, great people – they would rather not do [it] before [November]. They’d rather do it right after the election.” In my opinion, that’s exactly backwards. It’s just another stall tactic.