Donald Trump: “It’s A Disgrace What’s Happening In Our Country” But “Merry Christmas”

President Donald Trump held an impromptu press conference on Christmas morning at the White House with a noticeable lack of Christmas cheer. Shortly after his Merry Christmas message to U.S. service members, Trump doubled down on his demand for border wall funding to end the partial government shutdown, and launched into a tirade against Democrats. “It’s a disgrace what’s happening in our country,” he told reporters. “But other than that, I wish everybody a very merry Christmas.”

When asked about the ongoing government shutdown – “I can’t tell you when the government is going to be open. I can tell you it’s not going to be open until we have a wall, a fence, whatever they would like to call it,” he asserted. “The only one that doesn’t want the wall are the Democrats, because they don’t mind open borders. But open borders mean massive amounts of crime.”

He also claimed that federal employees on furlough or working without pay support him in his demand for the wall.

“I think they understand what’s happening,” he said. “They want border security. The people of this country want border security.” “It’s not a question of me,” he continued. “I would rather not be doing shutdowns. I’ve been at the White House. I love the White House, but I wasn’t able to be with my family. I thought it would be wrong for me to be with my family, my family is in Florida, Palm Beach, and I just didn’t want to go down and be there when other people are hurting.”

He also repeated a claim made yesterday, without providing any details, saying he’d recently approved 115 miles of a border barrier. He said he’d be visiting that stretch of the border in January, “It’s going to be built, hopefully rapidly,” he said. “I’m going there at the end of January for the start of construction. That’s a big stretch.”

He wasn’t asked about the Russia investigation, but weighed in anyway, repeating his “no collusion” stance. He alleged “a lot of collusion by the Democrats” with “very dishonest people.”

Trump has been relatively quiet on the Twitter front so far this morning, simply tweeting “Merry Christmas!” shortly before 5 AM.