Sen. Chris Coons, a day after calling President Donald Trump's call for a steel barrier at the nation's southern border a "minor but important step" on Tuesday, slammed him as a person who negotiates by taking "one step forward, two steps back."
"Let's take the Syria example first," Coons told CNN's "New Day." "President Trump made an abrupt, ill-conceived public announcement that we were going to withdraw our troops from Syria. It's taken weeks and the resignation of his of his Secretary of Defense to persuade him to change that to a slower conditions-based withdrawal and just last night."
Trump already has flipped on the idea of steel slats versus a concrete wall at least once, said Coons, and he doesn't expect his comments on slats to be the final word.
"I frankly don't expect him to hold to that position for more than a few minutes, let alone an entire day, so I was accepting that steel slats are preferred by the Department of Homeland Security over a concrete wall," said Coons. "I wasn't saying that I think we should be pouring billions of dollars into a border barrier. We should instead prioritize real border security investments at the land ports of entry, which is where the vast majority of our challenges really are."
The senator also disagreed with Trump's comments about a national security crisis at the border, insisting that the real crisis is that 800,000 federal employees will be going without a paycheck during the shutdown.
However, he said he does agree that more more money is needed to improve border security, but if Trump tries to use his executive power to build a border wall, he thinks he'll face a "significant and likely significant challenge in court."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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