Donald Trump has contradicted his own chief-of-staff over claims he is rowing back on a campaign pledge to build a wall along America’s southern border and get Mexico to pay for it.
White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly told Fox News the President’s views on immigration and a border wall had “very definitely changed” after Trump had been briefed on the subjects.
“He has evolved in the way he’s looked at things,” Kelly said. “Campaign to governing are two different things and this president has been very, very flexible in terms of what is within the realms of the possible.”
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Asked whether Mexico would pay for the wall, Kelly suggested the payment would be indirect.
“We have some ideas on how things like visa fees, renegotiation on Nafta, on what that would mean to our economy. So in one way or another, it's possible that we could get the revenue from Mexico but not directly from their government,” he said.
CNN says Trump was left “fuming” by the interview and immediately hit back with a series of tweets defending his campaign promise.
Sources also told CNN that Kelly told Democratic lawmakers some of Trump’s positions on the border wall were “uninformed”.
“The mixed messages over where the President stands could complicate the immigration debate raging in Congress as Washington tries to avoid a government shutdown on Friday,” says Vice News.
The central issue is the status of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era immigration program that offered temporary protection to undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. Also known as Dreamers, they are estimated to number around 800,000.
Trump ended legal protection for Dreamers last year, giving Congress until March to create a replacement programme. Last week, he rejected a compromise by three Democratic and three Republican senators to restore protection in return for allocating money for the wall and other security measures.
Now Democrats, at least some of whom Trump needs to avoid a federal shutdown, have signalled they will not vote for a new government spending bill without some version of DACA.