Disputes Kelly’s claim that plan wasn’t ‘fully informed’
President Trump insisted on Thursday that his idea of a Mexican border wall has not “evolved” — a day after his chief of staff told lawmakers that his boss’ pledge to build the barrier was not “fully informed.”
“The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it,” Trump tweeted. “Parts will be, of necessity, see through and it was never intended to be built in areas where there is natural protection such as mountains, wastelands or tough rivers or water.”
He also reiterated that Mexico would pick up the tab.
“The Wall will be paid for, directly or indirectly, or through longer term reimbursement, by Mexico,” he wrote.
Still, the president later praised Chief of Staff John Kelly as “a very special guy.”
“He is great, I think he is doing a great job. I think Kelly is doing a really great job. He is a very special guy,” the president said after he arrived in Pittsburgh to tout his recently passed tax plan.
Asked about Kelly’s assertion that Trump wasn’t “fully informed,” the president denied that’s what his chief of staff meant.
“No, he did not say that,” the president said. “He didn’t say it the way you would like him to say it.”
On the flight to the Steel City, White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah told reporters that Trump wasn’t upset with Kelly but with press accounts of his comments.
“The president is frustrated with the media coverage over the last 24 hours of that interview and of the meeting,” Shah said.
During a Capitol Hill meeting Wednesday, Kelly told Democratic lawmakers that a wall would not be erected along the entire southern border and that Mexico would not pay for it.
In a later interview, he took credit for shaping Trump’s thinking.
“There’s been an evolutionary process that this president has gone through . . . and I pointed out to all the members that were in the room that they all say things during the course of campaigns that may or may not be fully informed,” Kelly told Fox News.
He said Trump has “adjusted the way he’s looked at” other matters as well, including the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
The Obama-era program, known as DACA, shields from deportation immigrants who as children were brought to the United States illegally by their parents.
The issue is at the center of negotiations as Congress tries to hash out a spending bill to prevent a
shutdown at Friday midnight, when the government runs out of money.
As part of the deal, Democrats want a vote to protect DACA, which Trump rescinded last September and gave Congress until March 5 to make some legislative fixes.
Trump reiterated in another tweet on Thursday that the wall was needed for the “safety and security of our country” and declared it could be a deal killer. “If there is no Wall, there is no Deal!” he said.
It’s now painfully clear that Democrats in Congress are happy to use the Dreamers as a political football, rather than seek a compromise that lets these young people live without fear of the deportation.
Yes, as the deadline for the governmentfunding bill arrived, Democrats insisted that all they really want is a deal to protect Dreamers. But they haven’t been negotiating in anything like good faith.
Yes, President Trump’s opening ask was big: In return, he wanted Wall funding plus an end to both the “diversity visa lottery” and to “chain migration.”
But the Dems’ first offer was a joke, including legalization of Dreamers’ parents. And when Trump and his team rejected it, Democrats didn’t await a counter-offer. They went to the press to denounce his (ad- mittely awful) “s - - t house” remark.
In tough negotiations, you just don’t leak like that if you want to keep on bargaining. Going public is a bid to stop talks — as this move did, yielding days of noise that did nothing to help those 800,000 young people.
There’s plenty to compromise on: the extent and duration of the protections, the amount of new border-enforcement cash and so on. It’s unlikely the prez would insist on getting all his initial demands: That’s not the way of “The Art of the Deal.”
But Dems figure they’ll come out the winners on any government shutdown — and if the Dreamers don’t get protected, it’ll be a great issue for this fall’s campaigns.
The Democrats may read the politics right, but that hardly makes them the party of the righteous.