In a rare break from pandering to President Trump, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade spent Thursday morning warning that a declaration of national emergency to fund a Mexico border wall would constitute a “disaster.”
Trump has repeatedly warned he may invoke the dubious executive power to fund his long-sought project sans congressional approval, noting on Capitol Hill on Wednesday that “I have the absolute right to do national emergency if I want.”
But Kilmeade sat baffled on the couch, warning: “It would just be a disaster in the big picture and just show us being inept and unable to govern around the world, and it would just set a terrible precedent.”
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Then he warned, “The next president, if it is a liberal president, will say a state of emergency will be climate change. Look at what happened with [Hurricane] Sandy, look at what happened with the earthquake, look at what’s happening to the polar bears, who’ve no place to walk on ice.”
Co-host Steve Doocy was largely in agreement: “The more both sides are dug in, White House officials confidentially are saying this is probably the option he’s going to take.”
“He also knows that the Democrats will immediately challenge him in court,” Doocy added.
Even so, several Republicans have publicly sided with Trump in his fight for a border wall via national emergency declaration.
“Clearly we have a crisis at the border—a humanitarian crisis as well as a national-security crisis,” Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, for example, told The Daily Beast.
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) echoed that sentiment, proclaiming: “All I can say is, right now a national emergency ought to be declared. I don’t know why President Obama didn’t do it. I don’t know why President Trump hasn’t done it.”
