Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough asked Katy Kay about the likelihood of the Republican Congress giving Trump his beloved wall.
"Last week, you had the head of the Freedom Caucus saying, 'Wall, schmall.' Even the Freedom Caucus are saying, 'We're not going to shut down the government to give Donald Trump money for the wall that nobody needs," Scarborough said.
"Right, and the president is saying yes, that's something he considers a possibility," Kay said.
"Everybody now seems to accept, except from the White House, officially, that Mexico is not going to pay for this wall. Sara Huckabee Sanders was asked about that. She said the president didn't say that Mexico wasn't going to pay for the wall.
"They twisted themselves into this ridiculous situation where he spent all that time saying we're going to have the wall. We're going to get the Mexicans to pay for it. It's patently obvious the Mexicans are not paying for it, and the Republicans are saying, 'We don't want to pay for this wall, either."
"Illegal immigration is down," Scarborough said. "Mexicans that came here and went across the border illegally are going home. I mean, more are going home than coming here. This suspect the huge upsurge we saw during the Bush and Obama administration, and they were starting to go back before Donald Trump ran for president.
"Are you suggesting that facts contrary to a Trump platform are dispositive?" Jon Meacham said.
Meacham said the wall promise and now the debate about the finances "are a perfect metaphor for the entire drama of 2016/2017."
"It's an effective communications political weapon. It's not particularly fact-based. it's probably never going to happen. and, yet, the 30 to 35% or so of hardcore Trump supporters are probably going to stick with him on it."
"It's also a question of how the president -- a reflection of how the president mismanaged his own party. in picking fights consistently with the Republican party, when he needs them to do something that they don't want to do, and they watch his approval ratings sliding, they're less likely to do anything."
