Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to commit to president-elect Donald Trump’s plan to build a border wall, and instead chose to stress the broad idea of “border security” without saying a wall would be the right approach.
“Border security is important,” he told reporters. “I think even our Democratic friends realize we haven’t done a very good job of that, and achieving border security is something that I think should be high on the list.”
While McConnell wouldn’t fully embrace the idea of a building a wall, he also didn’t rule out the possibility. “I want to achieve border security in whatever way is the most effective,” he said.
Trump’s plan, which appeared to be backed by millions of voters in his early Wednesday morning election victory, raises the question of how Congress will handle it once Trump takes office next year. Republican leaders, including McConnell, had put some distance between themselves and Trump during the campaign, but McConnell indicated he was going to leave that in the past when it comes to Trump.
“I’m not going to re-litigate the events of the past,” McConnell told reporters. “We have a new president. I would like for him to get off on a positive start … we should look forward, not backward on various debates we had both internally and externally and with the Democrats over the last year.”
In June, McConnell said he was worried Trump could ruin the GOP’s relationship with Hispanic voters beyond repair, and compared the problem to one Republicans faced with black voters in 1964 when Barry Goldwater won the party’s nomination and voted against the Civil Rights Act.
“And I think the attacks that he’s routinely engaged in, for example, going after Susana Martinez, the Republican governor of New Mexico, the chairman of the Republican Governors’ Association, I think, was a big mistake,” McConnell told CNN in early June.
On Wednesday, however, McConnell tried to downplay the tensions that flared between Trump and other Republicans.
“I know he’s really happy that he has a Republican majority, and we look forward to working with him,” Trump said. “I think most of the things that he’s likely to advocate, we’re going to be enthusiastically for.”
“Where we have differences of opinion, I expect to discuss them privately and not sort of hash them out in public,” he said. “The goal would be to try to get on the same page, to try to turn the country in a different direction.”
