TRUMP FACING REPUBLICAN REBELLION OVER SHUTDOWN.

Storms out of meeting with top Democrats

WASHINGTON • A Republican rebellion against Donald Trump’s refusal to reopen government without new money for his Mexico border wall appeared to be growing as his television address failed to break the impasse.

Trump slammed his hand on a table and stormed out of a White House meeting with congressional leaders Wednesday after Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would not fund a wall along the southern border, dramatically escalating the confrontation over the shutdown.

Stunned Democrats emerged from the White House meeting declaring that Trump had thrown a “temper tantrum.” The president’s allies accused Democrats of refusing to negotiate. Then he tweeted that the meeting was “a total waste of time.”

The afternoon altercation came after Trump attempted to rally nervous Senate Republicans around his strategy to keep parts of the government closed until Democrats accede to his demand for US$5.7 billion for a border wall.

Three Republican senators are now publicly calling for the federal government shutdown to end even if there is no border wall deal, while half a dozen more have voiced concerns about the standoff.

Trump implored his own party to stick with his strategy during a closed-door lunch with Republican senators on Capitol Hill Wednesday.

He claimed there was “tremendous Republican support” for his stance, insisting it was the Democratic Party, and not his own side that was feeling the pressure.

But his blanket declaration of support clashed with the fact that some Republican politicians are beginning to break with him as the government shutdown enters its 20th day.

Pressure will ramp up in the coming days as many of the 800,000 federal workers impacted miss out on a paycheque for the first time since the shutdown begun. Some 25 per cent of the U.S. federal government is affected. A recent Reuters/ipsos opinion poll found that 51 per cent of Americans believe Trump “deserves most of the blame” for the shutdown against 32 per cent who blame congressional Democrats.

Trump’s prime-time address to the nation from the Oval Office on Tuesday night, his first since taking office, was full of harsh warnings about illegal immigration but broke little new ground.

He called the situation at the 2,000-mile-long U.S.Mexico border a “humanitarian crisis” and urged the millions of Americans watching to phone their congressmen and demand a border wall.

However the arguments Trump deployed were the same as he has been making for weeks.