According to President Donald Trump, his position on the border wall to separate Mexico and the United States has never changed, despite what White House chief of staff John Kelly said in recent interviews, and despite Trump’s flip-flopping on the wall since running for president.
On Wednesday, Kelly appeared on Fox News and said that the president “was not fully informed” when he talked about building a wall across the entire border and “has changed the way he’s looked at a number of things.” Moreover, Kelly said, a deeper dive on the dumbass wall that no one wants has proved that there “are places where, geographically, a wall would not be realistic.”
“Campaign to governing are two different things,” Kelly said in the interview, Politico reports. “And this president has been very, very flexible in terms of what is within the realm of the possible.”
In addition, according to CNN, Kelly told Democrats on Wednesday that some of the president’s campaign positions were “uninformed.”
Well, Kelly may have wanted to talk to his boss before speaking recklessly, since it turns out that the company line is to continue to act as if Trump’s position on the wall hasn’t changed, despite evidence to the contrary.
On Thursday the president tweeted that his position “has never changed or evolved,” even though it has both changed and evolved.
“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 president added: “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. The $20 billion dollar Wall is ‘peanuts’ compared to what Mexico makes from the U.S. NAFTA is a bad joke!”
Trump touted throughout his 2016 presidential campaign that Mexico would be paying for the wall. He flaunted his business savvy as the reason voters could trust him to get the job done.
Meanwhile, Mexico never said that it would be paying for a wall. Former Mexican President Vicente Fox even posted this awesome video to underscore how much they wouldn’t be paying for the wall:
Now that Trump is in office and Mexico remains adamant that it won’t be paying for any wall, the president has demanded that funding for the stupid wall be tucked into the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals bill. He’s gone so far as to say that he won’t even entertain a DACA bill if it doesn’t include taxpayer funding of his dumbass wall.
Kelly was sold and glorified as the steady hand who would help clean up Trump’s act. Since being hired, he has been instrumental in streamlining who had access to the president and has been credited with trimming the fat at the White House, including removing hangers-on Omarosa Manigault Newman and Steve Bannon. But the love affair between Kelly and Trump might be coming to an end.
Referring to some of the president’s campaign positions as “uninformed” feels like a nice way of saying that the crazy man in office doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. But something is going to have to give: Kelly has to either fall in line with Trump’s telling of the facts or find himself an honest gig outside the White House. I don’t think he can be part of Trump’s inner circle and be truthful, when we’ve seen consistently that the truth and Trump are diametrically opposed.