SUMMARY: President Trump announced Saturday that his chief of staff John Kelly is leaving his post by the end of the year. Kelly replaced Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus in July 2017. Trump said Kelly's successor would be declared in the coming days. To put this in perspective, NewsHour White House Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor joins Hari Sreenivasan via Skype.
SUMMARY: Former White House adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman refuted President Donald Trump’s claim Monday that she signed a nondisclosure agreement, saying she never agreed to keep quiet about her work as a senior administration official.
Trump tweeted Monday that Manigault Newman, who is promoting her new book “Unhinged: An Insider Account of the Trump White House,” which is highly critical of the president, signed a nondisclosure agreement though he didn’t specify when.
Manigault Newman said Monday she signed a nondisclosure agreement, known as an NDA during her time starring alongside Trump on the reality television show “The Apprentice” in 2003, and again when she worked for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. But Manigault Newman, who was fired from the White House last year, said she did not agree to sign a nondisclosure agreement after Trump took office.
“I never signed that draconian NDA that they presented to me when I walked into the White House,” Newman told the PBS NewsHour anchor and managing editor Judy Woodruff.
SUMMARY: The Trump campaign is suing former staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman for allegedly violating a nondisclosure agreement she signed when she joined the campaign. The Trump administration has also reportedly tried to get White House staff to sign similar agreements. What is an NDA and how are they used in the federal government? William Brangham gets analysis from attorney Mark Zaid.
SUMMARY: President Trump on Wednesday tapped Emmet Flood, a veteran Washington attorney who represented former President Bill Clinton, to join his legal team. Flood replaces Ty Cobb as the lead White House lawyer in the special counsel investigation. Judy Woodruff talks with Robert Costa of The Washington Post about the disagreements inside the President’s legal team.
SUMMARY: On a day when President Trump ordered the U.S. trade representative to consider an additional $100 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, and the administration announced sanctions against Russian government officials and tycoons, the President also seems to be pondering the fate of embattled EPA administrator Scott Pruitt. Yamiche Alcindor joins Judy Woodruff for a recap.
SUMMARY: The Trump administration announced new sanctions to punish Russia for "malign activity" around the world, targeting 24 Russian government officials and tycoons. John Yang speaks to special correspondent Ryan Chilcote about what makes the latest round different from previous actions and whether they will put pressure on President Vladimir Putin.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including the abrupt announcement that President Trump intends to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the tariffs imposed on imported steel and aluminum and a lawsuit against the President by actress Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the name of Stormy Daniels.
Judy Woodruff (NewsHour): And now to the analysis of Shields and Parker. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker. David Brooks is away this week.
And welcome to both of you. Happy Friday.
Mark, two bold strokes by the President this week.
Let’s start with the one that we led the program with tonight, North Korea. Surprised, I think, a lot of people by saying he will meet, as long as North Korea meets certain conditions. Was this the right move?
Mark Shields, syndicated columnist: We will find out if it was the right move, Judy. It was a bold move. Make no mistake about it. And it disarmed his critics who had accused him of being — bellicose language, which was provable, and that he was risking the brink of war almost, and especially gratuitously belittling the North Korean leadership.
Judy Woodruff: Little rocket man.
Mark Shields: Little rocket man.
And then, miraculously, the North Korean — seemingly miraculously — said, I’m willing to negotiate and consider the possibility of removing my nuclear capability, which I think nobody above the I.Q. of room temperature believes.
But, at the same time, the problem with North Korea in the past has not been their willingness to meet or to negotiate or to agree. It’s just that North Korea has never kept its word. But the President certainly has taken a bold act. And it’s brought us back from the brink of war. And I think there’s an audible sigh of relief.
Judy Woodruff: Smart move, Kathleen?
Kathleen Parker, Washington Post: I just see it as very, very risky.
And it’s risky because, on the one hand, he’s giving Kim Jong-un this legitimacy that he has for so long wanted. You know, when the President of the United States says something, it’s always important, everybody listens, and when he does something, it’s always important. The markets go up and down when he opens his mouth.
When he — he can cause wars with his words. And when he now says he’s going to meet with North Korea, he is setting himself up for all sorts of problems, potential problems. But he’s also, because he’s Donald Trump, has lots of wiggle room to pull out of it at the last minute if he decides the circumstances aren’t right.
We don’t know exactly what those are. And it’s all been just odd, I think, to have had these — his messaging about what North Korea’s willing to do came from the South Koreans, who then also were the ones to present…
Judy Woodruff: They’re the ones who announced it.
Kathleen Parker: Who announced it in front of the White House.
And I was taken aback by that. I thought, well, is he out? Did he have a dinner date, so that somebody else had to talk about it? And at what point is Trump going to talk to the country about this very, very important and significant move?
Judy Woodruff: And, in fact, Mark, it was announced abruptly. The South Korean official who was at the White House was there.
He was going to meet with President Trump today. Yesterday, the President, we are told, it’s been reported that he heard he was in the White House, went to see him. The President stuck his head into the press room and said, we’re going to have an announcement about — that you will want to pay attention to.
So the way it was announced, the way it was handled raises some questions.
Mark Shields: It does raise questions, Judy. But the questions have been raised and continue to be raised.
As one Republican explained to me, you have to understand that every day is a new reality show. And there’s no continuity to this Presidency. And it’s winning the day. It’s changing the conversation. He’s changed the conversation.
What was the conversation? Gary Cohn, his economic adviser, was quitting because of his trade policy. What was the conversation? Stormy Daniels, the porn actress with whom the President allegedly had — or at least President’s people paid $130,000 to just before the election, was going to go public.
The disarray in the White House, that — you name it, Republican civil war, if not — civil war is strong, but at least Republican strife over his trade policy. This knocked it all off the front pages.
I did notice the South Korean National Security Adviser had mastered one of the great secrets of dealing with Donald Trump was, he began, continued and ended the entire conversation by praising President Trump for the meeting, that it was all due to his leadership, his strong, principled positions.
And so, you know, this worked for Donald Trump. It got the other bad stories away for at least 24 hours.
Judy Woodruff: Kathleen, how much attention should we be paying to the theatrics of this, the orchestration of it? How much do we learn by looking at that?
Kathleen Parker: Well, I don’t know that we learn anything from the theatrics, because it’s become sort of a template of his.
And you do realize you’re watching a reality show. But there are other troubling aspects of this. And that includes the fact that we really have no representation in that part of the world. We have no ambassador to South Korea.
And our special representative to North Korea has just left the building with mostly, probably, I’m not sure, but I think because of a disagreement with Trump about how he was — about his bellicosity.
But this fellow, Joseph Yun, was tending toward having these talks. And then to add to that we don’t have any real diplomatic involvement. Rex -- Secretary of State Rex Tillerson -- is speaking publicly about how we’re nowhere close to talking to North Korea, and within the same news cycle, the President is making this announcement or accepting this invitation.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including President Trump's firing of White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and what it means for relations with the Republican Party, the Senate's rejection of a “skinny repeal” of the Affordable Care Act and Anthony Scaramucci's obscene tirade.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): It's been another head-turning week in Washington, from the Republican failure on health care, to the President's surprising statement on transgender military members, and a flurry of profanity from the new White House communications director and then, to cap it off, today's announcement from Mr. Trump that he is changing his chief of staff.
Here to help make sense of it all, Shields and Brooks. That is syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
So, I thought we had a lot of things to talk about, David, before about an hour ago, when we learned that the President was changing his chief of staff.
Is this — I guess we knew that this might happen. Reince Priebus has been in trouble with this President, we think, for a while, but what do you think?
DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: Well, he was never given the chance to do the job.
Every other chief of staff we have ever seen sort of controls the schedule. They control the tempo in the White House. They're the alter ego of the President. They are given some clear sign of respect that they speak for the President.
And Priebus never had that. And so he was wounded and stabbed before Scaramucci came along. He was stabbed like a piƱata. And so he was sort of a pathetic figure hanging out there. And so this doesn't come as a total surprise, except for maybe the timing.
As for General Kelly taking the job, I sort of question his sanity there. He's been a loyalist, but I really — with all due respect to the Marine Corps, I don't see how someone who's been trained in pretty orderly chain of command is going to survive this mess.
If he can control the schedule, it will be one thing. I just don't think that's going to happen, given all the independent power figures all around him.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you make of it, Priebus out and Kelly in?
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Judy, I am continually amazed that it's not simply a matter of human decency or empathy when your boss is firing anybody to make sure that person leaves and has a soft landing, that they can leave with their self-respect, that they can leave with someplace to go to, with a plausible explanation to their family and friends that they weren't humiliated, abused and derided.
This President treats staff and others like a used sickness bag on a bad airplane flight. There's just absolutely no sense of respect or decency shown, so you humiliate somebody.
And for those who are left, there is just a sense of, could I be next? It certainly doesn't inspire loyalty.
As far as Kelly is concerned, General Kelly is a four-star general. But I think David put his finger on it. He had a very distinguished and honorable military career. But he grew up in a military structure. He thrived up in a military structure.
As a chief of staff at the White House, this is a freelancing operation. There's no chain of command. There are all sorts of people who go in and see the President any time, who are not accountable to you or responsible.
And least of all, you have a President who will even — won't abide by any sense of a chain of command or structure. And I don't know that General Kelly has any particular political gifts or knowledge of the legislative process or dealings with the press.
So I'm not — I know that the President admires him and the job he's done at Homeland Security and his career, but I don't see the fit.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we should say that Reince Priebus, just in the last few minutes, David, put out a statement saying it's been one of the greatest honors of his life to serve this President.
I guess that's what one expects, maybe.
DAVID BROOKS: Gracious. I'm not sure he would pass a lie-detector test.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVID BROOKS: But one of the things that's happening here is that the President is moving away from the Republican Party.
Priebus was a link to the Republican Party. The congressional Republicans were — had some sort of relationship. Jeff Sessions was a key to the link between congressional Republicans and Donald Trump, and he's been under assault in the most humiliating way imaginable.
And so you're beginning to see an administration — I don't know what party they're joining, maybe the Bannon party, but it's not the Republican Party. And if you want to pass legislation, you probably need your allies on Capitol Hill. If you want to survive investigative committees, you probably want some friends in your party. And this administration seems to be moving the other direction.
-----JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, which leads us to another — I mean, David, you said they have had a struggle anything passed, getting legislation passed. This was a flame-out for them.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, this was a bigger thing than Donald Trump, though.
It was only one bill that lost. It was four bills that lost. And it wasn’t only a six-months effort. It was a seven-year effort.
MARK SHIELDS: I agree.
DAVID BROOKS: And you could say you could go back to Newt Gingrich.
Think of all the ways the Republicans have tried to trim entitlements like Medicaid or cut government. Name a signal victory. There’s not a victory. They haven’t been able to trim one agency, cut back one entitlement. They failed every single time.
And that suggests isn’t an electoral failure. It’s not a failure of whether Mitch McConnell had the right strategy or not, though that was lamentable. It’s a failure of trying to take things away from people.
People are under assault from technology. They’re under assault from a breakdown in social fabric, breakdown in families. They have got wage stagnations. They just don’t want a party to come in and say, we’re going to take more away from you.
And so Republicans have to wrap their minds around the fact that the American people basically decided that health care is a right, and they figure, we should get health care. And our fellow countrymen should get health care.
It doesn’t mean you have to do it the way the Democrats want to do it with single-payer or whatever. You can do it with market mechanisms. But you have basically got to wrap your mind around universal coverage.
JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you see what happened here, Mark? And where do you see it going on health care?
MARK SHIELDS: Judy, the yapping dog, which was the Republican Party, after chasing the bus for seven years, caught it and had no idea what to do with the bus.
All you needed is that final vote that Lisa described so well, and that is the final argument, after seven years, after winning three national elections where that is your organizing issue, we’re going to repeal Obamacare, came down to a single promise and pledge to your fellow Republicans from the leadership, and that is, what you are voting for, we promise will not become law.
I mean, if you can imagine anything, I mean, that just said it all. I mean, it was a terrible performance. The House voted on something without even a congressional budget scoring of it. The Senate voted on something. They didn’t even have a bill when they brought it to the floor. There was no legislation.
So, I mean, it was horrendous. It was disappointing. There were no ideas. There was no will. There was no imagination. And there was certainly no courage.
I don’t blame Donald Trump, but what was Donald Trump saying? Donald Trump was saying he’s disappointed in the attorney general because he wasn’t loyal to him. That was his contribution to the debate on health care as it came to a vote in the Senate.
SUMMARY: Why are there so many leaks coming out of the White House? Matt Schlapp of the American Conservative Union and Karine Jean-Pierre of MoveOn.org, join Judy Woodruff to discuss various tensions bubbling on Capitol Hill, from President Trump's public criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to the President's call to bar transgender service members from the military.
SUMMARY: President Trump's escalating criticism of Jeff Sessions over his rescual from the Russia investigation has exposed a rare public rift between a President and his attorney general, leading some to believe that Sessions may be forced out. How did we get here, and how are fellow Republicans responding? John Yang and Sari Horwitz of The Washington Post join Jeffery Brown to discuss.
SUMMARY: Jared Kushner faced another round of questions about his contacts with Russian officials during and after the Trump campaign. William Brangham speaks with Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) one of the lawmakers who questioned Kushner in the closed session, about whether Kushner's answers were satisfactory and the possibility of Attorney General Jeff Sessions being forced to resign.
SUMMARY: President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner met privately with the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, answering more questions on Capitol Hill about his interactions with Russian officials during the campaign and beyond. William Brangham speaks with Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) a member of the committee, about what questions he had going into the meeting with Kushner.
SUMMARY: Most Americans believe civility is getting worse since President Trump was elected, according to a new poll. Judy Woodruff talks to Tamara Keith of NPR and Stuart Rothenberg of Inside Elections about the results of the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, the President’s continued attacks against the media and the continuing battle over health care on Capitol Hill.
SUMMARY: Thousands of investors apply and participate annually in the little-known EB-5 visa program, designed to stimulate the U.S. economy through job creation and capital investment by foreign investors. Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports that recently, one real estate business in particular has put it back in the spotlight; that of the family of Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the testimony of former FBI Director James Comey before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Welcome, gentlemen.
So, let's continue the conversation about James Comey.
David, we heard today what the President thinks of it. He said he thought the former FBI director vindicated him, but he also was telling lies. What did you think?
DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: I thought Trump actually had some points.
I think one of the things we heard on the criminal side, it wasn't a bad, not a terrible day for Donald Trump. James Comey seemed to suggest that there was no — maybe — cast some doubt at least the idea there was a lot of collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign or even a lot of conversations.
I think what Trump did to James Comey, clearing the room and asking him to lay off on Flynn, was scandalous, I think terrible, but probably not something that would rise to the level of impeachment in any normal Presidency.
So, to me, on the criminal front, not a disastrous testimony for Donald Trump. On the cultural front, on the moral front, kind of disastrous. The thought that he [Trump] lied is pretty strong. We do know, because of what Comey said yesterday, there's going to be a lot more investigations.
And every time there's some sort of independent or special investigation into the White House, it can swallow a White House up not only for months, but for years. The Whitewater investigation went on for seven years.
And so I think what's going to happen is, you are going to have a continued administration that's dysfunctional, that is under investigation, that is distrustful, and a President who's obsessed, not with policy, not with anything constructive, but with this sort of warfare.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What did you make of James Comey and what he had to say?
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: I thought James Comey was believable.
I thought he was compelling, in large part because, Judy, he admitted his flaws. He did not present himself as Galahad or some profile in courage. He acknowledged the fact that the pressure of being one-on-one with the President just in the White House, that he had not said to the President it was inappropriate. He said he hadn't been strong enough.
But what was most revealing to me of all the hearings, Republicans — and I do want the say one word to the Senators. I mean, they didn't do soliloquies. They didn't do seven-minute statements followed by a question, do you agree? I thought — and they didn't show rank partisanship, I felt, and that there was a seriousness led by Chairman Burr and Co-Chair Warner.
But what impressed me most of all was that, while Republican Senators were willing to come to the defense of the President, a point David made, that there wasn't obstruction of justice on his part or whatever, none of them challenged Director Comey's direct statements the President lied and that he was a liar, and that is why he had to memorialize each meeting with the President, each conversation with the President, because he feared that the President would lie.
And nobody said, 'no, wait a minute, this is George Washington.' This is a man [Trump], a total — he does have a reputation for exaggeration, hyping, and some would say not a totally consistent relationship with the truth and reality.
And I think that's a real problem for him [Trump]. The fact he wasn't under investigation is significant, but, ironically, nobody asked him, and Director Comey didn't volunteer, whether, as a consequence of what happened in his meetings at the White House, that he may now have opened himself up to some investigation, he, the President.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to the discuss the week's news, including the appointment of a Special Counsel to lead the Russia probe at the Justice Department, reports that President Trump shared sensitive intelligence from another country with Russian diplomats and how all of it affects the running of the government.
SUMMARY: As questions swirl around President Trump's decision to fire former FBI Director James Comey, earlier this week TIME Magazine was given unusual access behind the scenes at the White House. Judy Woodruff talks to Michael Scherer of TIME Magazine about what he learned about the President's perspective from their meeting.
White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney made an apples-to-oranges comparison when he said he couldn't understand why Democrats opposed supplemental funding for a border wall since many of them were for it back in 2006.
Mulvaney is referring to the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which called for construction of 700 miles of fencing and enhanced surveillance technology, such as unmanned drones, ground-based sensors, satellites, radar coverage and cameras. Sen. Chuck Schumer and then-Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were among a bipartisan majority that voted in favor of the legislation, and it was signed into law by President George W. Bush.
In a very general sense, the Democrats named by Mulvaney supported a bill to build more border fencing in 2006, and Trump is now asking for money to build a wall and fencing.
But the scope and political context of the two efforts are quite different.
Mulvaney raised the comparison during an interview on “Fox News Sunday” on April 23, when he was asked if Trump would risk a government shutdown by insisting a government funding bill include $1.4 billion to begin construction of his promised border wall. The possibility of a government shutdown is the result of a temporary spending bill passed by Congress last year that funds the government at its current levels only until April 28. A new funding bill needs to be passed by that deadline to avert a partial government shutdown, which would shutter many government services and agencies except for essential functions like the military, federal prisons and air traffic control.
Schumer and other Democrats said funding for the wall was a nonstarter, and they vowed to oppose a funding bill with that in it.
“We don't understand why the Democrats are so wholeheartedly against it,” Mulvaney said. “They voted for it in 2006, then-Senator Obama voted for it. Senator Schumer voted for, Senator Clinton voted for it. So, I don't understand why Democrats apply in politics just because Donald Trump is in office.”
“Actually, what I would say is that [Democrats] are holding hostage national security,” Mulvaney said later in the interview. “Again, something they've supported in the recent past when President Obama was in the Senate. So, we don't understand why this is breaking down like this, and we are worried, Chris, that this is sending a message that this is going to be the next four years, that Neil Gorsuch was not just a one-off thing, the Democrats will oppose everything this president wants to do.”
Trump later backed away from his insistence on $1.4 billion in supplemental funding to begin construction of the wall. He promised, however, that the wall “will get built,” despite the setback.
Mulvaney's charge that Democrats used to support the very wall Trump is calling for is not new. In fact, Trump raised that point with Clinton in the third presidential debate.
“Hillary Clinton wanted the wall,” Trump said at the Oct. 19 debate. “Hillary Clinton fought for the wall in 2006 or thereabouts. Now, she never gets anything done, so naturally the wall wasn't built. But Hillary Clinton wanted the wall.”
Clinton responded, “There are some limited places where that was appropriate. There also is necessarily going to be new technology and how best to deploy that. But it is clear when you look at what Donald has been proposing. He started his campaign bashing immigrants, calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals and drug dealers, that he has a very different view about what we should do to deal with immigrants.”
A spokesman in Schumer's office pointed out similar contrasts between the two plans. Trump during the campaign called for a 30-foot tall concrete wall for the length of the border. But the Secure Fence Act was “a bipartisan plan to strategically place clear-view, secure fencing that works hand in glove with surveillance technology. Democrats and Republicans have supported such policies in the 2006 Secure Fence Act and the 2013 bipartisan immigration reform law,” Schumer's spokesman said.
“The contexts, I think, were different,” Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications at the Migration Policy Institute, told us via email. “Today's discussion involves fencing off the entire 2,000-mile border, while the earlier debate focused on adding significant (700 miles) but still limited miles of fencing at locations designated by DHS as necessary.”
The flow of illegal immigration has also changed dramatically since 2006, Mittelstadt said. When the Secure Fence Act was being debated in 2006, it was a time of surging illegal immigration. The peak in the unauthorized population was reached in 2007, Mittelstadt said, when it was estimated at 12.2 million people – a number that has since declined by more than 1 million. Total apprehensions of illegal immigrants along the southern border are also down, from just over a million in fiscal year 2006 to about 400,000 in 2016, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Mittelstadt noted that the political context is also vastly different, as some Democrats ceded to the Secure Fence Act as a political compromise to a Republican plan to criminalize all unauthorized immigrants, and to make it a crime to assist unauthorized immigrants.
“It's an apples-to-oranges comparison,” agreed Edward Alden, an expert on immigration policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“The Secure Fence Act was written in a way to get support from both sides,” Alden told us via email. “The Democrats, by and large, supported the use of 'tactical' fencing in high-traffic areas, something that the Border Patrol had long favored. Trump's wall proposal seems to call for fencing the entire border, which Democrats have never supported.”
Part of the problem in comparing the plans is the difficulty in pinpointing what exactly Trump is proposing.
“We don't know the specifics of what's being proposed,” Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center, told us in a phone interview. “It's not exactly clear what type of fencing we're talking about, and where. There's a lot of ambiguity about what the plan entails.”
On March 17, U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued two requests for proposals “to acquire multiple conceptual wall designs with the intent to construct multiple prototypes.” One RFP is for a “solid concrete border wall,” and the second RFP is for “other border wall.” For the “other border wall,” the RFP says: “Prototypes constructed in response to this solicitation must offer designs that are alternatives to reinforced solid concrete walls (i.e. no solid concrete external faces).”
The wall — whether solid concrete or an alternative design — must be between 18 feet and 30 feet tall and 2 feet wide, according to the RFPs. It also must go 6 feet below the ground to prevent people from tunneling under the wall.
There is currently quite a bit of fencing along the southern border, Wilson said, thanks in large part to the Secure Fence Act of 2006. But it is of various types, roughly divided between “pedestrian fencing” (seen here) — designed to stop foot traffic — and the less substantial “vehicle” fencing (seen here), which is designed to stop vehicles but can be walked through with ease. In the places where it makes the most sense to have fencing, Wilson said, there is some kind of fencing in place already.
As for the length of the wall proposed by Trump, the U.S.-Mexico border is 1,933 miles. But a Department of Homeland Security document obtained by Reuters indicated that the administration will not seek to build new barriers the full length of the border.
“The plan lays out what it would take to seal the border in three phases of construction of fences and walls covering just over 1,250 miles (2,000 km) by the end of 2020,” Reuters wrote on Feb. 9. “With 654 miles (1,046 km) of the border already fortified, the new construction would extend almost the length of the entire border.”
The ambiguity of what's actually being proposed by Trump has also drawn Republican opposition.
According to a Wall Street Journal survey, “Not a single member of Congress who represents the territory on the southwest border said they support President Donald Trump's request for $1.4 billion to begin construction of his promised wall.” (Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has since introduced a bill that would reserve any funds forfeited to the U.S. by Mexican drug lord JoaquĆn “El Chapo” GuzmĆ”n to pay for “completion of the wall along the Southern border.”) Several Republicans told the Wall Street Journal they were concerned that Trump's immigration policy focused too narrowly on building a wall, rather than a comprehensive immigration plan, or that border security funds would be more wisely spent elsewhere.
There's another difference between the 2006 bill and what Trump is proposing. Trump has repeatedly promised that Mexico will pay for the wall. A spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told the Wall Street Journal, “The White House's demands that American taxpayers now foot the bill for a multi-billion dollar boondoggle are intensely opposed by Democrats and many Republicans.”
Not everyone agrees, however, that Democrats are not flip-flopping on the issue.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for lower immigration, said that because the public doesn't know exactly what border barriers the Trump administration wants to build, Mulvaney's statement is not an “exact” comparison. But, he said, to dismiss it simply on that basis would be “tendentiously literal.”
“The fact is that, other than the 'Mexico will pay for it' stuff, Trump is simply channeling the 2006 Secure Fence Act, and Schumer et al. who voted for it out of political calculation are indeed hypocrites for opposing the attempt to finally bring that law to fruition,” Krikorian told us via email.
At the surface level, it is true in a broad sense that Democrats including Schumer, Obama and Clinton have in the past supported border fencing. All three voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, and all three supported the 2013 Senate immigration overhaul that passed the Senate, and which called for tougher border security including some additional fencing. But to claim that those measures are the same as what Trump is proposing is a stretch.
SUMMARY: Companies routinely lobby on their own behalf, a normal practice that helps corporate profits and economic livelihoods. But moves by ExxonMobil and others are fueling scrutiny of the Trump administration and its corporate influences. Norman Eisen of the Brookings Institute and The Wall Street Journal's Jay Solomon join Hari Sreenivasan to discuss how these moves are raising red flags.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including how Republican members of Congress are facing heat from crowds of their own constituents while home during recess, why President Trump's views have shifted on China, NATO, and Janet Yellen, and more.
