Department of Homeland Security Sec. John Kelly dropped a bombshell revelation Wednesday about Donald Trump's precious border wall. Jamie DuPree writes:
“I will say this, that it’s unlikely that we will build a wall or physical barrier from sea to shining sea,” said Secretary John Kelly, as he testified before a Senate Committee.
Hmm, not exactly the "big, beautiful, powerful" border wall Trump promised to build along the entire 2,000-mile stretch of the nation's Southwest border. In fact, day by day, Trump's wall gets a lot less grandiose. Last month, we found out some of it would just be a fence.
Kelly framed the changes as "strategic fencing"—with some wall, some fence, and some electronic surveillance. Of course, the notion that he couldn't put a finger on exactly how much wall would actually get built also gave him room to deflect questions about the wall's eye-popping price tag: anywhere from $20 billion to 50 billion, depending who's doing the estimating.
“There’s no way I can give the committee an estimate on how much this will cost,” as Kelly said he was still developing – with the input of border officials – plans that would be a mixture of physical barriers, electronic measures and more.
That led Democrats on the committee to question whether Trump had been looped in on the downgrade of his chief campaign promise.
“Is the President okay with fencing instead of a wall?” asked Sen. Clare McCaskill (D-MO).
“The President has told me, Kelly go do it,” Kelly said.