Donald Trump issued the first veto of his presidency Friday, shooting down a resolution of disapproval which would have blocked his declaration of a “state of emergency.”

Trump’s emergency declaration pages the way for him to bypass Congress and use military funds to pay for the wall he wants along the southern border of the United States.

The Senate approved the resolution of disapproval Thursday, with 12 Republicans joining all Democratic senators in favor of disapproval.

Although both House and Senate passed the resolution, neither did so by margins large enough to override Trump’s veto.

“Yeah, nobody’s beaten up. I said, ‘Use your own discretion.’ But I think it’s a bad vote if they go against,” Trump said, ahead of the vote, of Senate Republicans who supported disapproval.

“I think anybody going against border security, drug trafficking, human trafficking, that’s a bad vote,” Trump added. “The Democrats are for open borders, they’re for crime. I mean, frankly, they’re for crime. These people can tell you that better than anyone. When you have open borders, when you don’t have walls, you know it very well, all of you folks know it very well, we deal with it all the time.

“I guess they think it’s good politically. I think it happens to be bad politically,” Trump continued. “I think it’s an 80 percent issue and maybe more than that. But the Democrats, in order to make things difficult, they offer open borders and they’re for crime. And the Republicans aren’t.

“But I told Republican senators, ‘Vote any way you want. Vote how you feel good.’ But I think it’s bad for a Republican senator,” Trump concluded. ‘I also think it’s bad for a Democrat senator to vote against border security and to vote against the wall. I think if they vote that way, it’s a very bad thing for them, long into the future.”

Trump’s fight to build his wall doesn’t end with the veto, as the “state of emergency” declaration is also being fought in the courts, including affected landowners where the wall would be built in Texas.