Leaving amid an acrimonious battle over funding for President Trump’s border wall, Chief of Staff John Kelly revealed during a candid exit interview that Trump’s promised ‘border wall’ isn’t actually a wall. In fact, the words ‘barrier’ or ‘fence’ would probably be more appropriate, as we pointed out.
“To be honest, it’s not a wall,” said Kelly – who embarked in early 2017 on seeking advice from those who “actually secure the border,” on what to do. Speaking with Customs and Border Protection agents – referred to by Kelly as “salt-of-the-earth, Joe-Six-Pack folks,” the outgoing Chief of Staff recounts “They said, ‘Well we need a physical barrier in certain places, we need technology across the board, and we need more people’.”
“The president still says ‘wall’ — oftentimes frankly he’ll say ‘barrier’ or ‘fencing,’ now he’s tended toward steel slats. But we left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration, when we asked people what they needed and where they needed it.”
President Trump was unsurprisingly less than pleased to hear Kelly once again publicly question the president’s dedication to building a wall, and in a Monday morning tweet, Trump contradicted Kelly’s assertion that plans for a concrete border wall had been abandoned during the early days of the administration after consulting with CBP agents. Instead, Trump insisted that “some sections” of the wall would be made of concrete, while other portions would be “see through” in accordance with the wishes of border patrol experts.
“An all concrete Wall was NEVER ABANDONED, as has been reported by the media. Some areas will be all concrete but the experts at Border Patrol prefer a Wall that is see through (thereby making it possible to see what is happening on both sides). Makes sense to me!”
An all concrete Wall was NEVER ABANDONED, as has been reported by the media. Some areas will be all concrete but the experts at Border Patrol prefer a Wall that is see through (thereby making it possible to see what is happening on both sides). Makes sense to me!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2018
The tweet didn’t mention Kelly by name, but Trump’s dissatisfaction with his former chief of staff’s decision to break with the party line was obvious to all. Though whether Trump will succeed in securing funding to start construction remains to be seen, as the partial government shutdown provoked by his funding battle with Democrats enters its tenth day, halfway to tying the longest shutdown ever.
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