On Wednesday during an interview with ABC News, President Donald Trump sat down with host David Muir to discuss the executive order that Trump was planning to sign later in the day pertaining to Mexico and U.S. national security. The interview was conducted just hours before Trump held a press conference at the Department of Homeland Security to announce the components of the 17-section executive order. Among other things, the executive order calls for a wall along the southern border of the United States that Trump says will begin to be built “in months.”
“As soon as we can, as soon as we can physically do it,” Trump said when asked about when construction is set to take place. “I would say in months, yeah. I would say in months — certainly planning is starting immediately.”
The order specifically called for the Secretary of Homeland Security, General John Kelly, to “take all appropriate steps to immediately plan, design, and construct a physical wall along the southern border.”
Though it does not specify exactly how the wall will be funded, the order says lay out that those in charge of national security should “identify and quantify all sources of direct and indirect Federal aid or assistance to the Government of Mexico.”
Trump told Muir that he still believes that ultimately, Mexico will be responsible for the payment of the border wall.
“Ultimately, it will come out of what’s happening with Mexico … and we will be in a form reimbursed by Mexico, which I’ve always said,” he said.
“All it is, is we’ll be reimbursed at a later date from whatever transaction we make from Mexico,” he continued. “I’m just telling you there will be a payment. It will be in a form, perhaps a complicated form. What I’m doing is good for the United States. It’s also going to be good for Mexico. We want to have a very stable, very solid Mexico.”
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