White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany confirmed that there is a possibility Trump’s administration could use sanctuary city reforms as a bargaining chip for funding states in Phase 4 of the coronavirus stimulus.
“Phase 4 is something we want to start negotiating on immediately and get to work on,” McEnany said Friday during her first appearance as White House press secretary, adding that funding shouldn’t “be an excuse for decades and decades of bad Democrat governance that have run these states into a financial predicament.”
“I don’t want to get ahead of negotiations but want to emphasize he has mentioned sanctuary cities. It is something he would like to see in phase four,” she said.
Few days ago, President Trump suggested during a meeting with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that “sanctuary city adjustments” were on the table during coronavirus relief discussions, as the Washington Examiner reported.
“We’re not looking to recover 25 years of bad management and to give them the money that they lost. That’s unfair to other states,” President Trump said.
“Now, if it is COVID related, I guess we can talk about it,” he added. “But we’d want certain things also, including sanctuary city adjustments, because we have so many people in sanctuary cities, which I don’t even think are popular even by radical left folks, because what’s happening is people are being protected that shouldn’t be protected. And a lot of bad things are happening with sanctuary cities.”
President Trump has been a strong critic of sanctuary cities, specifically in California, where he has butted heads with Gov. Gavin Newsom several times on the subject.
A study from last year suggested that illegal immigration costs the American taxpayer $6,500 each per year.
