Donald Trump insisted Thursday that his conception of a border wall between the U.S. and Canada has ‘never changed or evolved’ and that it will ultimately be funded by Mexico in some way, in what appeared to be a response to his chief of staff’s hedging a day earlier.
‘The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it,’ the president 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.’
‘The Wall will be paid for, directly or indirectly, or through longer term reimbursement, by Mexico, which has a ridiculous $71 billion dollar trade surplus with the U.S.,’ Trump added.
‘The $20 billion dollar Wall is “peanuts” compared to what Mexico makes from the U.S. NAFTA is a bad joke!’
President Donald Trump still plans to build a wall separating the United States and Mexico, he insisted Thursday, and claims his plan to wring the cost out of Mexico is still alive
Trump made his claim after his chief of staff, John Kelly, told Democratic lawmakers that the president’s ambitious campaign promise to wall off Mexico from the U.S. was not realistic
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told a group of Hispanic lawmakers his boss’s campaign promises about immigration policy had been ‘uninformed’ as he ran for the presidency.
Kelly, according to the Post, also conceded to the group that there ultimately won’t be a border wall ‘that Mexico will pay for.’
In The New York Times’ telling of that meeting, Kelly says the president’s views were not ‘fully informed’ during his 2016 campaign as he touted the central ‘Build the wall’ message.
On Wednesday evening Kelly sat down with a Fox News Channel interviewer and allowed that Trump had ‘changed his attitude toward the DACA issue and even the wall,’ referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The president ‘has evolved in the way he’s looked at things,’ Kelly said.
‘Campaigns and governing are two different things, and this president has been very flexible in terms of what’s in the realm of the possible.’
‘The Wall is the Wall,’ Trump tweeted, saying that it ‘will be paid for, directly or indirectly, or through longer term reimbursement, by Mexico’
The DACA program, which protects hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from deportation because they were children when they arrived in the U.S., is set to wind down in March unless the White House and congressional Democrats save it through a deal that the president insists must include funding for wall construction.
‘We need the Wall for the safety and security of our country. We need the Wall to help stop the massive inflow of drugs from Mexico, now rated the number one most dangerous country in the world. If there is no Wall, there is no Deal!’ the president added in a follow-up tweet on Thursday.
During his meeting with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Kelly took credit for being ‘the one who tempered’ Trump’s positions on building a wall, Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona told the Times.
The president added in another tweet that there will be ‘no deal’ on immigration and DACA without funding to build a border wall
The Department of Homeland Security has erected eight prototypes for the wall-building project near San Diego, California
Illinois Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez told the Times that Kelly had said ‘a 50-foot wall from sea to shining sea isn’t what we’re going to build.’
The U.S.-Mexico border is 1,989 miles long, but much of it consists of rivers and other natural barriers. Nearly 700 miles of fencing already exist along its length.
The Trump administration has funded the construction of eight wall prototypes. An administration official told DailyMail.com last week that the president is considering traveling there after his State of the Union Address to inspect them first-hand.