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 President Trump, who repeatedly insisted during the 2016 campaign that Mexico would pay for a wall along the southern border, is privately pushing the U.S. military to fund construction of his signature project. After floating the notion to several advisers last week, Trump told House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) that the military should pay for the wall, according to three people familiar with the meeting last Wednesday in the White House residence.
– After failing to get Congress—or Mexico—to cough up enough cash for a wall along the Mexican border, President Trump has been looking into getting the Pentagon to pay for it, reasoning that it has plenty of money under the new federal budget, insiders say. The sources tell the Washington Post that Trump, worried that failure to build the promised wall will cause supporters to desert him, has been privately pushing Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, among others, to make the wall a military-funded project because of national security fears. But officials say the military is unlikely to pay for the wall, and even if the Pentagon was willing, it would require an act and the move would not get 60 votes in the Senate. In a tweet Tuesday, Trump argued that the military is "rich" and building a border wall is all about national defense because there are "enemy combatants pouring into our Country." "Build WALL through M!" he urged. Trump wants $25 billion for the wall, but the latest spending bill allocates just $1.6 billion, with restrictions on how it can be spent. "First Mexico was supposed to pay for it, then US taxpayers, and now our men and women in uniform?” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tells the Post. "This would be a blatant misuse of military funds and tied up in court for years." CNN reports that press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to comment on possible military funding Tuesday. The "continuation of building the wall is ongoing, and we're going to continue moving forward in that process," she said.