President Trump is reportedly “furious” with Chief of Staff John Kelly for comments Kelly made about the president’s pursuit of a wall along the southern border between the U.S. and Mexico. Kelly, speaking with Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill yesterday, said that the president’s wall promises during the campaign were uninformed, and that Mexico will not pay for the wall.
“Certain things are said during the campaign that are uninformed…many campaigns are not fully informed about every policy and that campaigning and governing are two different things and that governing is harder,” Kelly said.
The president sought to set the record straight in a series of tweets this morning about his promises of seeing a wall built and who will foot the bill.
The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it. 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…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018
….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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018
The president seemed to chafe the most about the tone of Kelly’s comments, making it seem like the president was a political novice who needed to be managed. The president felt the comments made it look as though he were giving in to Democrats.
Close friends of the president say he is happy with the job performance of John Kelly overall, but that immigration is a touchy subject. Christopher Ruddy, a Trump longtime friend of the president’s and the president of the media outlet Newsmax said, “In President Trump’s world, you can have disagreements privately or publicly, but immigration is a hot-button issue for him and it’s something he doesn’t like to see disagreements on, especially publicly.”
“He knows how important it is to his base,” Ruddy said.