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 91ȱ 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".