Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he might declare a national emergency to circumvent Congress and build a border wall if spending talks fail, raising the stakes for negotiations set to resume later in the day.

“I think we might work a deal, and if we don’t we might go that route,” Trump told reporters during a bill signing in the Oval Office.

Trump said he has the “absolute right” to declare an emergency, even though some legal scholars and Democratic lawmakers say he does not.

Trump added that his “threshold” for declaring a national emergency is if he cannot reach a deal with congressional Democrats, who have rejected his demand for $5.7 billion for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The president is scheduled to meet later Wednesday afternoon with Democratic and Republican congressional leaders at the White House in an effort to break the deadlock. So far, Democrats have held firm to the position that the president must agree to reopen the government before they will engage on the larger issue of border security legislation and his proposed wall.

Trump insisted that he maintained “tremendous” Republican support, even as nearly a half-dozen Republican senators have said directly or strongly suggested that they wanted to reopen the government, then have the debate about the wall.

“I think we have tremendous Republican support,” Trump said. “The Senate has been incredible. Mitch McConnell has been incredible,” he said, referring to the Senate majority leader.

The president, who has refused to sign any bill to fund the government that does not include $5.7 billion for the wall, also said some Democrats were moving to his point of view, although he did not offer any names.

“The fact is that there is tremendous support,” he said.

“If I did something that was foolish, like gave up on border security, the first ones that would hit me would be my senators — they’d be angry at me,” he said. “The second ones would be the House. And the third ones would be frankly my base and a lot of Republicans out there and a lot of Democrats that want to see border security.”

I take a little bit of comfort in knowing there is a little part of McConnell that dies when Trump calls them “my senators.”

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) January 9, 2019

WATCH:

Seriously, Obama-era libertarians, where the fuck y’all at? pic.twitter.com/WT0X3gayQ1

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) January 9, 2019