Exclusive: Paul Ryan Reportedly Says No Chance for Border Wall at Private Dinner

Exclusive: Paul Ryan Reportedly Says No Chance for Border Wall at Private Dinner

73

http://media.breitbart.com/media/201...fh-640x454.jpgThe Associated Press

by IAN MASON12 Sep 2017WASHINGTON, D.C.


House Speaker Paul Ryan, at a private dinner earlier this year, said he thought only “one member” wanted to build a wall across the entire U.S.-Mexico border, Breitbart News has learned from multiple sources with direct knowledge of the comments, including former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO).

The dinner, sources said, took place on the eve of the House’s passage of two relatively minor immigration bills at the end of June: Kate’s Law and sanctuary city reforms. The far wider reaching Davis-Oliver Act was tabled at the same time.


“Ryan told a group of Republicans he met with … that only one person wants a wall,” Tancredo told Breitbart News shortly after the dinner.


Tancredo took issue with the Speaker’s characterization of support for the wall within the House GOP. “Of course he means only one person in his entourage and of the leadership,” he told Breitbart News. “I know several people in Congress who want a wall and I know that there are millions of Americans who want a wall.”


“You have to understand the level of fear that exists in the Republican establishment about this issue,” Tancredo told Breitbart News, seeking to explain the pressures that Republican members of Congress face when addressing immigration.


“The Chamber of Commerce doesn’t want a wall … the pressure is greater from the Chamber of Commerce than it is from the members,” Tancredo, who for years in the House fought a mostly fruitless battle to get Congress to combat the flood of illegal immigration, added. “That’s the basic problem. It was then. It is now.”

A current House GOP member confirmed that Ryan made a remark similar to the one Tancredo referenced, but stressed that the Speaker was attempting to summarize the disparate voices in the House GOP caucus, telling Breitbart News:

All this narrative serves to inform is that Ryan’s is making a point of listening to Members and that Members mostly are trying to listen to each other. I believe it is true that support for the wall is not as strong as it needs to be among House Republicans.

That member added an assessment of the difficulties facing the effort to fund the wall. According to this member who supports a border wall, one of the biggest problems is Republicans’ lack of knowledge of the history of the immigration issue and the failures to secure the border in the past. The House member told Breitbart News:

Another thing I have noticed is that Members’ knowledge and opinions on immigration seem to only be traceable back to their arrival in Congress. Not many brought much experience or knowledge on the topic with them. 64% swore in January 2011 or later. They only know that which was debated in the Obama era. Some are Never Trumpers.


We have work to do.

The office of Speaker Ryan and another House GOP member who Breitbart News was told attended the dinner neither confirmed nor denied that Ryan made the comment about support for the wall.


The southern border wall is President Donald Trump’s signature campaign promise and the ability of the Republican-controlled Congress to deliver the authorization and funding will likely define the success or failure of the administration’s immigration agenda. As Tancredo put it to Breitbart News:

Every rally [the president] would whip up the crowd saying we’re going to build a wall. And so you had hopes that in putting so much rhetoric into it during the campaign that it would be hard to avoid it … but so far they have found a way to do so.

So far, no funding has been forthcoming, with any mention of the wall dropped from the Spring’s GOP budget proposals. The White House itself was unclear as to when funding might be expected.

Ryan, interestingly, has been claiming that the House has funded the border wall this year. But, the claims from his office that the House-passed funding measure “fully funds the Trump administration’s request for a wall along the southern border” are misleading at best. What Ryan’s office is referring to in that release, sent out on Tuesday, are the 12 appropriations bills. Those will not become law, because Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell failed to get them passed out of both chambers of Congress and onto the president’s desk. As such, President Trump cut a temporary deal with the Democrats to avert a government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling in a joint package.


Tancredo was pessimistic the congressional Republican leadership can be easily brought on board with the immigration agenda of the president and the party’s conservative wing. According to him, Ryan, who was caught on tape after the emergence of the now-infamous Access Hollywood recording of the President saying he was, “not going to defend Donald Trump—not now, not in the future,” would rather lose elections to Democrats than seriously address the issue of illegal aliens.


“Ryan and the Senate Majority Leader [Mitch McConnell] would rather have had Hillary than Donald Trump for that very reason,” Tancredo told Breitbart News. “They failed at stopping him and now they’re going to have to stop him legislatively.”



http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...rivate-dinner/

Trump has no plans to build a wall across the entire Mexican border, never did. He thinks about 1,000 miles and we already have 650 miles of fencing, some of it is a joke and has to be redone or replaced with a wall, but even another 200 to 300 miles of wall in key places, like the 74 miles they want to build in San Diego and El Paso Sectors would make a huge difference. Paul Ryan ain't right. He's got to go. I hope Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District can face this reality and elect someone else like Paul Nehlen.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Judy

Trump has no plans to build a wall across the entire Mexican border, never did. He thinks about 1,000 miles and we already have 650 miles of fencing, some of it is a joke and has to be redone or replaced with a wall, but even another 200 to 300 miles of wall in key places, like the 74 miles they want to build in San Diego and El Paso Sectors would make a huge difference. Paul Ryan ain't right. He's got to go. I hope Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District can face this reality and elect someone else like Paul Nehlen.

---

Trump's Incredible Shrinking Border Wall

The president said Thursday that he wouldn’t pursue sealing off the entire border as he had pledged to do on the campaign trail.



https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/m...jpg?1499978385
Mike Blake / Reuters

• PRISCILLA ALVAREZ
• JUL 13, 2017

Donald Trump has repeatedly pledged to seal off the U.S.-Mexico border. But on Thursday, the president told reporters that he only intends to cover “anywhere from 700 to 900 miles.”

“It’s a 2,000 mile border, but you don’t need 2,000 miles of wall because you have a lot of natural barriers. You have mountains. You have some rivers that are violent and vicious. You have some areas that are so far away that you don’t really have people crossing. So you don’t need that. But you’ll need anywhere from 700 to 900 miles,” he told reporters on Thursday.

In fact, that’s a good description of what’s already along the southern border. Some 650 miles of the border has already been blocked off with pedestrian or vehicle fencing as a result of President George W. Bush’s 2006 Secure Fence Act, which authorized the construction of a 700-mile wall of double layer fencing. “You know, we've already started the wall because we're fixing large portions of wall right now,” Trump said. He explained that the repairs were “making it new,” and thus “in a true sense, we've already started the wall.” His remarks suggest that his promise to “build the wall” could involve erecting as little as 50 miles of new barriers.


https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/m...jpg?1493754607
The Trump Administration Sketches a Border-Fence Plan

If the Trump administration no longer intends to significantly extend the existing barriers, the biggest change may be the form they take. Congress recently allocated a little more than $341 million “to replace approximately 40 miles of existing primary pedestrian and vehicle border fencing along the southwest border using previously deployed and operationally effective designs, such as currently deployed steel bollard designs, that prioritize agent safety; and to add gates to existing barriers” in its spending bill.

Erecting a physical barrier along the entire length of the southern border was a daunting task from the beginning: The topography can be an obstacle and obtaining land from private property owners can also present a challenge. Trump’s remarks appear to recognize these hurdles, as well as provide some detail on what he envisions—and why.

Trump also told reporters Thursday that one of the requirements in erecting a border wall is the ability to “see through it.” The idea might sound far-fetched, but in fact, Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has also made similar remarks in the past.

“One of the things with the wall is you need transparency. You have to be able to see through it. In other words, if you can’t see through that wall—so it could be a steel wall with openings, but you have to have openings because you have to see what’s on the other side of the wall,” Trump said.

He added: “As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them—they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It’s over. As crazy as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall. But we have some incredible designs.”

In February, Kelly testified before the House Homeland Security Committee that people on the border told him “their preference [for a physical barrier] would not be something they couldn’t see through.” Customs and Border Protection released guidelines for contractors in March. Among the options provided to them was “a see-through component/capability.” Ronald Vitiello, acting deputy commissioner at CBP, told reporters in June that the agency had not signed any contracts as of yet.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...r-wall/533622/

At his rallies he always made a joke about the media claiming it was a wall across the entire southern border, he would say we're not building wall where there's natural terrain with mountains and rivers and so forth. He always said about 1,000 miles of wall. What he said in that article is exactly what he said on the campaign trail at press conferences and especially at all of his rallies.

Trump's border "wall" promise has weakened from the beginning of his campaign until now. At first I do believe I recall him saying he was going to build a wall along the entire border. The original "wall" has shrunk considerably since the beginning of his campaign. Furthermore, he has always promised Mexico was going to pay for the fence. Okay, what has he done to that end? So far no increased fees for border crossing permits, no tariffs, no nothing to get money for the "wall" from Mexico. Moreover, he then goes to congress for the money but doesn't seem to be placing a lot of effort on that endeavor either. At this point, I'm not so sure this "big beautiful border wall" he promised is going to materialize.

I wasn't a big fan of the wall so I'm not the one to take that up with. I wish we didn't need it, but I guess we need it in some sections.

For me, "build that wall" was stop illegal immigration, however, by whatever, means necessary.

Quote:

---

“Ryan and the Senate Majority Leader [Mitch McConnell] would rather have had Hillary than Donald Trump for that very reason,” Tancredo told Breitbart News. “They failed at stopping him and now they’re going to have to stop him legislatively.”

---

Exactly the scenario - get rid of ryan and mitch