Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, in an interview airing Monday, defended the decision to reappropriate $1.5 billion in Pentagon funds toward border wall construction, saying that there is a crisis and the money is needed.
"We have a crisis at the border, a national emergency declared by the president," Shanahan told Fox News' Brian Kilmeade during the interview, which aired Monday on "Fox and Friends." "The commander in chief has given me a direct legal order of securing the border."
According to The Washington Post, the Pentagon will pull $1.5 billion from a nuclear ballistic missile program and from plans for a surveillance and communications plane for airborne fighter jets, among others.
President Donald Trump said last week he'll nominate Shanahan as secretary of defense. The former Boeing executive has been acting secretary of defense since Jan. 1. Former Defense Secretary James Mattis picked Shanahan as his deputy, and the nominee said Mattis gave him a role that was "really broader than being a deputy.
"It was to run the operations of the Pentagon," he said. "That's what I did before stepping into this assignment."
Mattis resigned after he disagreed with Trump on his Syria policy, and Shanahan said when he has a disagreement, he'll talk with Trump.
"I like working with the president," he said. "He is a CEO. He is focused on outcome and results. Will we always agree on everything? No. Do we have the same interest and focus? Yes. My job is to get the results we need to make this country the best and defend this country."
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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