I think we can all agree that OMB Director Mick Mulvaney has one of the most punchable faces in the government right now, and he did nothing today to discourage me from the urge to act on it.
Apparently Trump was quite upset that Democrats were doing a victory lap on the continuing resolution through September, so he sent Mulvaney out to spin, especially on The Wall, which did not receive any funding. In fact, the funds allocated for border security carry a specific requirement that they NOT be for a wall. Nevertheless, Mulvaney was sent out for the duration of what should have been Sean Spicer's press conference, and specifically to spin on The Wall.
Here's the transcript of exchange between Mulvaney and reporters:
REPORTER: Will the new one built along the U.S. Southern border look like that border wall right there?
MULVANEY: In certain places, yes. I'm not sure what your question is.
REPORTER: Is this a short-term fix and then --
MULVANEY: That's a 20-foot-high steel wall. That's not a short-term fix. I've been promising the young lady in the back a question.
REPORTER: And I'll follow up with that. Where is that being built and how many miles will you get out of it?
MULVANEY: I don't know where it's being built. The total spending is $347 million on that. But we haven't done the math.
REPORTER: What are we talking about?
MULVANEY: It depends. It's more expensive to build the wall in certain places. So this is going to be replacement. We have to figure out where we are. It's cheaper than building a new wall because we already have land acquisition here and there are probably roads out there to service it. When you build a new wall, you're starting from scratch and you have to build the infrastructure to get the construction teams out there to build. We haven't done the math on where we can build and what it will be. What we know is we have hundreds of millions of dollars to do this. You going to follow up on that or not?
REPORTER: Yes. When do you think you'll go out there and put up a wall?
MULVANEY: This construction that you see here -- I don't know if this is the exact construction. This wall is being installed on the southern border today. Yes, ma'am?
I see what he did there. He substituted a fence for a wall and claimed it was being installed on the southern border BECAUSE THEY MUST HAVE A WALL EVEN IF IT IS A FENCE.
Here is another thing that happened:
Yes, he bragged about holding miners' benefits hostage in order to get Democrats to give things up.
Oddly, it didn't seem to work. Maybe because those miners voted for Trump?
