the president doing an about face on immigration. yesterday he said he would sign any deal lawmakers brought him. today he s doubling down on the wall. that will include the wall. we need the wall for security, we need the wall for safety. we need the wall for stopping drugs from pouring in. i would imagine that the people in the room both democrat and republican i really believe they re going to come up with a solution to the daca problem which has been going on for a long time. and maybe beyond that, immigration as a whole. any solution has to include the wall. without the wall, it all doesn t work. i want to bring in two cnn political commentators, jack kingston is a former senior adviser to the trump campaign. you know who he is. he s here all the time. and steve israel, a former democratic congressman. you know who he is, too. thank you for coming on. mr. kingston you first. in president trump s meeting in
rate rather than the effective tax rate. that s arguable. that s not a lie. all that said, he exaggerates all the time. there s this concept in the real estate world, puffery. he s lived that for 40 or 50 years. you think it s fabulous he makes things up? everything for him, it s not good enough unless it s exaggerated by 25 or 30%. is that okay with you? no. let s talk about daca. you wrote a column today about daca. you saw the meeting yesterday that went on, and they the cameras in there. the president had to be corrected by republican lawmakers by saying, let s be precise. you re not really going to sign a clean bill that excludes a wall. right. what do you think? do you think there was a real possibility of compromise and something could get done? first of all, i think tonally, if that s only the demeanor people saw from donald trump, this boosterish,
barrier, build that fence, they were saying build that wall. that was the mantra. i thought it was unfortunate rhetoric, it was not a practical solution. by the way, i think canada is going to visa free travel with mexico. so mexicans could fly to canada, and come across the canadian border if they wanted to. anybody talking about a 4,000 mile thank you very much. people said that during the campaign as well. you explained why you are retiring, why do you think so many veteran republicans, 32 as of now, why are they heading to the exits? well, for my sake, i had no serious threat from the left, i had no credible opponent on the right. i was not worried about re-election. but a midterm election like this, it s clear that based on history, the party of the president usually is going to experience losses, particularly when one party has total
need to take care of these dreamers. children who came here no fault of their own. we can accommodate them, get them on the path to a green card and citizenship and provide for a border security component. i think it s unfortunate when the president uses the term wall. i think that confuses people. no one is talking about a 2000 mile concrete barrier on the southern border. no one s talking about that. i don t mean to cut you off. that s how it was portrayed and explained by the president. and promised by the president. a big, beautiful wall, a wall, with a big, beautiful door in the middle. his supporters may not know the topography there. they think there s going to be a wall across the entire southern border, and that s what they want. no. i was in congress in 2005 and 2006, when he passed the secure fence act. the president authorized 700 miles of barriers on the southern border, mostly double layer fence. that s what we felt we needed. it deals with drone technology,
sensors interior reinforcement. we need to fix the legal system of immigration. the bottom line is, we do need barriers in certain areas. nobody wants concrete barriers. border patrol doesn t. they want transparent barriers so they can see through them. you may need retaining walls for flood mitigation on the rio grand. i think it s unfortunate when this term wall gets thrown out there. we re really talking about establishing operational control of the border. with all due respect. that s what more reasonable people said, this is not going to happen, he s promising you something that is not possible. now he seems to be back peddling. it seems like that s what you re seeing, but that s not what people are expecting here. most with whom i speak they recognize it s not necessary to establish a 2,000 mile concrete barrier. nobody was say build that