Ann Coulter steps up Trump tirade: ‘The country would be run much better if I had a veto’

“Just keep your promise, and I’m right back in his camp,” the outspoken proponent of the border barrier told HBO host Bill Maher.

The conservative author and commentator continued her sharp criticism of Trump’s Friday move to end the 35-day partial federal government shutdown without securing the $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall in appearances on radio and TV, as well as on Twitter.

Though the president apparently unfollowed her on the social media service in December, she tweeted, “Break ground today.”, in response to his tweet defending the end of the shutdown.

Coulter, whom some have pointed to as a factor behind Trump’s scuttling of a bipartisan spending deal that would have avoided the Dec. 22 partial government shutdown, responded to Maher about her influence.

“I promise you, the country would be run much better if I had a veto over what Donald Trump is doing,” she said in her late Friday appearance on “Real Time With Bill Maher.”

Coulter said she was merely speaking for the Republican base committed to a wall. “The base is what has rebelled here. They can take me as a stand-in for the base, but that’s all I am, a member of the base,” she said.

The border wall is about illegal immigration taking away economic opportunity for Americans, she said.

“You’re being played to have everybody keep acting like this is some sort of racist thing. Working-class wages have gone down, middle-class wages have been stagnant. It’s great for the rich. It’s great for you. Bad for people who work,” she said.

Both parties as well as Wall Street would prefer “cheap nannies,” she said.

Trump, who has enjoyed a Republican majority in both the House and Senate through the first two years of his term, has not been able to secure money for a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. Coulter said that’s because Republicans don’t want it.

“We thought he wouldn’t care what the elites thought and that he’d actually keep his promises on this,” she said.