White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly told Fox News Wednesday night that President Trump wants to deal with the DACA issue to “take it away,” and the president also has come to believe that there are places where his long-promised border wall “would not be realistic.”
Earlier on Wednesday, in a meeting with the Hispanic Caucus on Capitol Hill, Kelly reportedly told lawmakers that some of Trump’s campaign pledges on building a border wall were “uninformed.”
Fox News’s Bret Baier asked Kelly about that on Wednesday night:
Well, I met at my request today with House Hispanic Caucus. I’ve done that three other times when I was at DHS. Met with them today, and had a discussion on a range of issues. I was mostly listening, because I’ve heard them so many other times and they know what the administration perspective is. But in any event, as we talked about things, where this president is and how much he wants to deal with this DACA issue and take it off the — take it away, I told them–
You know, there’s been an evolutionary process that this president has gone through as a campaign, and I pointed out to all of the members that were in the room that they all say things during the course of campaigns that may or may not be fully informed. But this president, if you’ve seen what he’s done, he has changed the way he’s looked at a number of things. He’s adjusted the way he’s looked at the South Asia strategy, Afghanistan. He’s very definitely changed his attitudes towards the DACA issue and even the wall.
Once we briefed him, when I was at DHS, and told him that the real experts on defending the Southwest border, the Customs and Border Protection men and women came in, did a, you know, a survey of the border. There are places where hydrographically, geographically, a wall would not be realistic. There are other parts of the Southwest border that are so wild and untamed that there is no traffic that goes through them. There’s other places, we think about 800 miles additional wall to include the 600 that are already in place, the fencing, would suffice.
So he has evolved in the way he’s looked at things. Campaign to governing are two different things and this president has been very, very flexible in terms of what is within the realm of the possible.
“And Mexico’s not going to pay,” Baier told Kelly.
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