Deputy White House Press Secretary Hogan Gidley Thursday slammed California Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu's claim that Democrats are willing to negotiate with President Donald Trump on border security.
"Ted Lieu was on earlier," Gidley told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "What he said was a flat-out lie. He just told you that if the president opened the government and gave everything that the Democrats wanted ... that they would negotiate on border security, including a fence. That is incorrect."
Lieu said during his interview, just before Gidley's, that it is time to end the weeks' long partial government shutdown, and that would make it "much easier to get to a compromise."
Gidley responded that Trump has exposed the "hypocrisy" of Democrats and commented that they "refuse to negotiate."
Trump had directly asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a White House meeting if she is willing to discuss barriers at the border if the government is open, and she refused, said Gidley.
"We all saw their ridiculous, ignorant and offensive language in that rebuttal to him ... when they kept using that phrase 'manufactured crisis,'" Gidley said, referring to when Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer gave their response to Trump's Oval Office address on Tuesday.
"We have a crisis in this country," said Gidley. "Democrats refuse to acknowledge it. They don't know the data, they don't believe the data and worse, they don't care."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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