Hogan Gidley: ‘100 Percent No’ Trump Did Not Cave on the Shutdown

EXCERPT:

GIDLEY: "100 percent, no. The President stood up for the American people, he opened the Government. And let's be clear what just happened here. The Department of Homeland Security, people at I.C.E. and Customs and Border Protection, the brave men and women put their lives on the line every day during the longest shutdown in history, they were working without pay while Congress was paid without working. The President had conversations with the American people directly, he told them what he wanted and what he needed, what the officials and those brave men and women I just mentioned said they needed to protect this country. He put that out daily. Democrats would not negotiate, they would not come to the table. But in the course of that conversation, in the course of that shutdown, what changed was that we had Democrats from rank and file positions come to us and say, listen, we ran on safety and security. Our constituents don’t think walls are immoral, they don’t think locking their doors at night protecting their own families is immoral. We are not Chuck — we are not like Chuck Schumer. We are not Nancy Pelosi’s puppet. We want to work with you guys to come to a solution. When we open the Government to actually build barriers along the southern border to protect the American people, and when we heard that, we realized the dam was beginning to break on the Democrat side, and we could get something accomplished. That’s why the President decided to open the Government and pay those hard working federal employees, 800,000 plus. The Government’s now open, and now it’s time to secure the border."