President fuels political debate

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump touched off a partisan debate over some of the most-divisive issues in American life on Wednesday as he cited this week’s terrorist attack in New York to advance his agenda on immigration and national security while assailing Democrats for endangering the country.

A day after Sayfullo Saipov, an immigrant from Uzbekistan, was arrested on suspicion of plowing a pickup truck along a bicycle path in Manhattan, killing eight, Trump denounced the U.S. criminal justice system as “a joke” and “a laughingstock,” adding that he is open to sending “this animal” instead to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Trump pressed Congress to cancel a visa lottery program that allowed Saipov into the country, attributing it to Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and calling Democrats “obstructionists” who “don’t want to do what’s right for our country.”

“The terrorist came into our country through what is called the “Diversity Visa Lottery Program,” a Chuck Schumer beauty,” he wrote on Twitter.

Schumer responded from the floor of the Senate: “President Trump, instead of politicizing and dividing America, which he always seems to do at times of national tragedy, should be bringing us together and focusing on the real solution — antiterrorism funding — which he proposed to cut in his most recent budget.”