As Congress works on passing a compromise deal to avoid another government shutdown, even staunch Trump supporter Rick Santorum concedes that “the president clearly is not a winner,” and that Trump “didn’t deliver.”
On Tuesday night’s edition of Anderson Cooper 360, host Anderson Cooper asked CNN contributors Kirsten Powers and Santorum about the compromise deal that seems to be headed for Trump’s desk.
“Kirsten, is this how you expect this all to go? That the president doesn’t get his $5.7 billion from Congress, but he does get the money from elsewhere, and is therefore able to say it’s a win?” Cooper asked.
Powers said that “I don’t know that he can necessarily call it a win,” and added that the compromise is “the only way forward for him.”
She also pointed out that while Trump wound up getting much less money than he asked for, Democrats extracted a concession on ICE beds.
“Senator Santorum, how do you see what’s happening?” Cooper asked the former Pennsylvania senator.
“Yeah, look, I think that’s right, I think the president clearly is not a winner out of this thing,” Santorum said, but then tried to shine things up for Trump a little by suggesting that the Democrats lost on the deal, too.
“Not nearly as big of a loss, but you look at Nancy Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi said, not a penny. Nancy Pelosi said, if you’re going to — you know, if you’re going to get wall funding, you’re going to give us other things, DACA, all these other things that were on the list in order to be able to wrest some wall money from the Democrats, and the president didn’t have to give on any of those things.”
“So, you know, it’s not a complete rout for the Democrats, because they really didn’t get anything out of this bill,” Santorum said.
The compromise includes funding for 55 miles of fencing, whereas candidate Trump specifically told his rally crowds that he would build a “wall,” “not a fence,” and that Mexico would pay for it. And as Powers noted, Democrats did extract the concession on the ICE beds.
In the end, though, even Santorum had to conclude that Trump “was the one who had the big show, and didn’t deliver.”
Watch the clip above, via CNN.
[Image via screengrab]
