Incoming White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney walked back Trump’s assertion that Mexico would pay for the border wall.
Said Mulvaney on ABC News’ This Week: “Technically, you and I both know that it cannot work exactly like that. The Department of Homeland Security can’t actually spend money from Mexico. We have to get it from the U.S. Treasury.
Mick Mulvaney: We're in a "good place" on getting wall built and having Mexico "participate" in border security.@jonkarl: "But none of that is Mexico paying for the wall"
Mulvaney: "Technically, you and I both know that it cannot work exactly like that" https://t.co/x12BrIM3Br pic.twitter.com/czCA1u38rN
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) December 23, 2018
On FOX News, Chris Wallace played a video for Mulvaney in which he called Trump’s wall a “childish” and “simplistic” solution, asking Mulvaney: “[If so], why is it worth shutting down the government?”
Said Mulvaney in 2015: “The fence doesn’t solve the problem. Is it necessary to have one? Sure. Would it help? Sure. But just to say build the darn fence and that be the end of immigration discussions is absurd and almost childish for someone running for president to take that simplistic a view.”
Mulvaney now says: “The border wall is absolutely necessary, which is why we’re having the battle. We need a comprehensive solution and a border barrier, steel-slat fence, has to be part of that.”
Video surfaced last week of Mulvaney calling Trump a “terrible human being” during the 2016 campaign.
Axios reported that Trump was furious and is already souring on his chief of staff pick, asking aides: “Did you know he called me ‘a terrible human being'” back during the campaign?
