Kelli Ward: ‘I absolutely trust President Trump’

“I absolutely trust President Trump,” Kelli Ward told THE WEEKLY STANDARD. “He ran on and he was elected on the promise of securing the border and building the wall. And I think he’s already working toward achieving these goals.”

Ward, who is mounting a primary challenge against Arizona senator Jeff Flake, is part of a new group of grassroots politicians rising in the wake of Trump’s presidential victory: insurgents whose pitch to voters rests on their dedication to the president’s “Make America Great Again” agenda.

Trump’s prickly attitude towards Republicans in Congress has made this a strong strategy: In Ward’s case, it even earned her a shout-out from Trump himself.

But there’s a danger in hitching your campaign to the Trump Train: sometimes it heads off in unexpected directions. Which is what happened with immigration policy this week and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

After a Wednesday evening meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, Donald Trump struck a number of different positions on Thursday. The president kicked things off at dawn, tweeting that “massive border security would have to be agreed to” in order to secure a deal to allow DREAMers to stay in the country. Then he told reporters that a DACA deal was “fairly close” and that “the wall will come later.” Then, after an outcry from his base, he reversed course again, saying, “If there’s not a wall, we’re doing nothing.”

Of course, this improvisational approach to policy is nothing new for Trump, who appears to run his administration in an ad hoc manner. But that could create difficulties for allies such as Ward, who suddenly find that their enthusiasm for policies that Trump championed five minutes ago suddenly conflict with the president’s current thinking.

It’s a hard act to balance. Speaking to TWS on Thursday, Ward alternated between insisting that her strong-border, no-amnesty policies hadn’t changed at all and reaffirming her support for President Trump, whose fledgling partnership with Pelosi and Schumer, she says, hasn’t fazed her.

“Of course I would love to have bipartisan support,” Ward said. “That’s how we get things done. These hyper-partisan efforts don’t lead to any good for the people who are out here in the trenches, they mainly lead to good for the consultants and political fundraising. That has to stop.”

But her prescription for immigration policy—border security first, DACA reauthorization later, if at all—diverges sharply from the one the president laid out Thursday morning.

“I think first and foremost we need a border security bill, a stand-alone border security bill, that includes funding and starting the wall,” Ward said. “And there should be consequences for people who came across our border the wrong way. They should not expect reward, which they got for years under the Obama administration; they should expect consequences. That’s the piece of legislation that needs to be brought up now if we could get it.”

This is largely the opposite of the plan Trump is (as of this writing) supporting: He currently wants to reauthorize DACA and increase border security as a package deal, and then get around to funding the border wall separately, at a later, unspecified, date.

And Trump seems pretty well-disposed toward the DREAMers:

It’s hard to see how this view aligns with Ward’s claim that “they should expect consequences.”

Ward’s insurgent campaign against Jeff Flake was supposed to be an indicator of the strength of the Trump wing of the party as it moves against the Republican establishment. But it might also turn out to be a good indicator of whether GOP primary voters are more loyal to Trump, or to Trumpism.