Fox & Friends defends using money from schools, the military, and Puerto Rico for a border wall: It was Trump's “most prominent campaign promise”
Ainsley Earhardt: “You have to ask yourself, is it more important to fund some of these military projects, or more important to fund the wall?”
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From the September 5 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Meanwhile, the president played many meteorologists yesterday, he talked about the storm, and then he talked about the wall, and he talked about immigration. And by the way, there are major drops in the August numbers, down about 30% from July. But there's still a lot needs to be done at the border, especially building the wall. Paul Ryan didn't give him money for it. The Democratic House didn't give him money for it. So he's re-purposing funds to do it. He talked about that yesterday.
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STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): And of course, he was, as Brian mentioned, defending his decision to reprogram $3.6 billion from the Pentagon, which effectively, if you're going to take that money, it's got to come from somewhere. And so essentially what it's doing is it is defunding 127 programs. The Pentagon initially did not say exactly where they were going to come from, the projects that were going to be put on hold. We do know that apparently half of the programs were in the United States and half were overseas or out of the nation.
AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): Well, you know, this was his most prominent campaign promise. So you have to ask yourself, is it more important to fund some of these military projects, or more important to fund the wall? He says 500 miles are going to be built by the end of next year around the election time. There are only 2,000 -- or there are 2,000 miles along the border between the United States and Mexico. So that will be one-fourth of the border will be covered in a wall if that is accurate, if he can put up 500 miles.
KILMEADE: Yeah. But it's amazing, the people that could not care less as President Obama's administration starved the military year after year and watched it rot away -- so the president for the last three years, as General Mattis said, he got 87% of his requests approved. They were rebuilding. They're taking a small percentage and reprogramming and delaying projects, not canceling them. But it didn't stop the sensationalist headlines. Well, certainly people are concerned about military projects. The Daily Beast writes the headline, "Trump raids elementary schools to pay for wall; Mexico off the hook." He's right. The president never should have said Mexico is going to pay for the wall, though he says they're going to get it in fees at border crossings. The Washington Post: "Pentagon takes money from Puerto Rico, European projects to fund Trump's wall."
DOOCY: I think he did think initially that he would find a way for Mexico to pay for it, but as we know, that did not work. Oh, final one; NBC News: "Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria. It's about to lose $400 million more to Trump's border wall."
EARHARDT: When they say "raids elementary schools," they're talking about a middle school in Kentucky at Fort Campbell; $13 million in child development centers for Joint Base Andrews; they're talking about a warehouse in Virginia; a fire station in Beaufort, South Carolina.
DOOCY: The programs will still apparently be built--
EARHARDT: They're just tabled right now.
DOOCY: --as long as Congress reprograms other money or backfills it so that those projects can go forward.
EARHARDT: All right, so those Democrats that are complaining about it, then maybe they can fund it.
DOOCY: Well, they can pay for it.
KILMEADE: Yeah. Maybe for the previous 8 years, maybe they could have stood up and said I'm a little concerned about our Defense Department falling apart. Now the president, now he decides he has to make a decision on spending, and he was going to spend that money.