Feinstein: President Trump Wasted $72 Million Sending Troops to Border

Washington—Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today released the following statement on President Trump sending troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to influence the election:

“In the days leading up to the 2018 election, President Trump repeatedly demonized asylum seekers who were thousands of miles from the U.S. border, fabricating claims of threats to our national security and going so far as to deploy U.S. soldiers to stop them.

“Since the election, the president has gone silent on the issue, and now those troops are preparing to return home, weeks before the majority of the asylum seekers will even reach the border. The charade that this deployment was based on our security is over; the White House and Pentagon are all but admitting that the President was using our troops for crass political posturing.

“And now we know the financial cost of the president’s overt political posturing: The Pentagon said it will have spent $72 million deploying nearly 6,000 soldiers on the president’s orders.

“These soldiers spent weeks away from home and the Pentagon wasted millions of taxpayer dollars so President Trump could stoke fears of asylum seekers and try to influence election results. Using our military men and women as political pawns to support an anti-immigrant agenda is a low point, even for this president.”

###