John Kelly breaks with Trump: ‘To be honest, it’s not a wall’

In the wake of President Trump’s continued call for a border wall, his outgoing chief of staff John Kelly made a noteworthy comment in a recent interview.

“To be honest, it’s not a wall,” John Kelly said in his interview with the Los Angeles Times.

“The president still says ‘wall’ — oftentimes frankly he’ll say ‘barrier’ or ‘fencing,’ now he’s tended toward steel slats,” Kelly added. “But we left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration, when we asked people what they needed and where they needed it.”

Reacting to Kelly’s comment, New York Times’ Maggie Haberman tweeted: “Kelly says the ‘wall’ was abandoned as a concept early in the administration. Trump still said ‘wall’ for most of the last two years.”

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Kelly’s remark comes amid a partial government shutdown that went into effect after lawmakers could not agree on a budget given the president’s demand for $5 billion in border wall funding.

In one of his many tweets since the shutdown started, Trump wrote: “We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with. Hard to believe there was a Congress & President who would approve!”