Trump uses ‘exaggeration like a salesman’
Mexico paying for a border wall with the US was probably not taken literally by the public, an adviser to President Trump's 2020 campaign, Mica Mosbacher has told ˿ Hardtalk’s Stephen Sackur.
“What they reacted to was his strength and the fact he said he would build a wall. I believe that that wall will be built,” she said, explaining that Mr Trump uses “exaggeration like a salesman".
The US government is in a partial shutdown - the longest in the country’s history - which has left hundreds of thousands of public workers unpaid and government offices closed.
President Trump is refusing to approve a budget unless it includes $5.7bn (£4.5bn) for a wall along the Mexican border - a key campaign pledge, which the president said that Mexico would pay for.
In a recent address he said Mexico would now pay for it "indirectly by the great new trade deal we have made".