“Trump did not push for the wall early on.”
You obviously don’t know what you are talking about.
As I mentioned to you earlier, he issued the governing Executive Order on 25 January 2017 - the fifth day of his Presidency. Meaning that it was being drafted and staffed months prior to his inauguration.
It was an agenda item at every cabinet meeting. It was central to every budget negotiation of his Presidency.
Congress (controlled by Republicans at the time), refused to fund full scale deployment of wall system, until an analysis was done, that answered the questions about the most efficient use of the money - where to put barrier, what was the best design for barrier, what the optimum tradeoffs were between barrier, technology and people; etc..
The Office of Management and Budget, as well as the Congressional Budget Office, always require such analyses and cost justifications of large programs, before they are incorporated into the budget. It is typically 5 to 10 years of such staffing for a multi-billion dollar program, before the fist dollar.
President Trump’s pressure got $400 million added to FY 2017 budget out of hide, and got a wedge of about $1.4 billion per year included into the ten year budget baseline that first year as well. (Ann Coulter was not involved in the budget negotiations).
Don’t you recall the high drama that ensued over every single Trump budget, over the wall? Does the longest Government shutdown in history ring a bell? Declaration of National Emergency? Legal Challenges through the Supreme Court?
President Trump faced fierce political opposition on multiple fronts, defeated it all, and has gotten the money to build the barrier recommended in the Comprehensive Plan. For those of us who have been following it closely, it has been continual, incredible high stakes commitment from the Trump Administration from day one - a top priority throughout.
I doubt that anyone else would have been able to make it happen, without President Trump’s rare combination of World Class real estate developer skills, exceptional management, astute political strategies, and tireless work ethic - certainly not Ann Coulter.
Was it just a coincidence that after Ann Coulter started posting tweets that said: “Number of miles of wall built today: Zero. Number of miles built so far: Zero”—that Trump all of sudden started dipping into national defense budgets to pay for the wall? Paul Ryan et al. were playing games. They were giving Trump half-a-billion here and there. Ann Coulter’s tweets, which were done over several months, lit a fire under Trump’s behind.
Look, I am a huge Trump supporter. I also like Ann Coulter. In fact, her book Adios America was Trump’s playbook and is THE reason why illegal immigration became front and center in 2016. We need people like Ann Coulter and others like her to push Trump in the right direction. BTW, there were MANY people who said that Trump could reallocate money for the wall. He could have done this in early 2017. I think Trump and his people thought they were better off using it as a campaign issue for 2018, to blame Democrats for the wall not being built. The problem was that Republicans controlled everything, so that argument wasn’t playing with the anti-illegal immigration base. BTW, a majority of the “new” wall is actually replacement wall (which was definitely needed). There would have been no “studies” necessary to tear down old wall and put up new, better wall.