On Saturday night, Ann Coulter, furious over President Donald Trump’s inability to build a massive wall along our Southern border, offered an idea to Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro, one of Trump’s favorite television hosts. “It’s his authority under the Constitution that cannot be taken away from him by any legislature, by any court … to defend our borders,” Coulter said. “I think it can be done right on our border as part of the defense.”
In other words, Coulter was suggesting that Trump use the surge of military funding included in last week’s omnibus bill to construct the wall. “Have the Seabees do it,” Coulter said.
Early the following morning, Trump, who has been known to watch Fox on DVR, tweeted that “because our Military is again rich,” the government should “build WALL through M!” As the Washington Post reported, in one of the more delightfully dry sentences of late, “Two advisers said ‘M’ stood for ‘military.’ ”
There are many reasons why this is unlikely to happen. There’s no clear authorization to use Defense Department monies in this way. There would be litigation. Also, the Defense Department does not want to do this, at all. All Democrats and many Republicans in Congress, too, would not be down with repurposing money for “rebuilding our military” to a make-work monument to political malinvestment on the border. Trump is mad that he didn’t secure his wall in the omnibus, and so he’s throwing out silly ideas and wasting West Wing man-hours by forcing his aides to look into them as though he’s onto something.
