Obama has a wall! Trump uses ex-president's DC

It's the latest missive from the president who's fighting his way out of a partial government shutdown over a battle with Democrats over funding his wall. Negotiations are at a standstill on day nine.

And three confidantes of Trump, including his departing chief of staff, are indicating that the president's signature campaign pledge to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border would not be fulfilled as advertised.

White House chief of staff John Kelly told the Los Angeles Times in an interview published Sunday that Trump abandoned the notion of 'a solid concrete wall early on in the administration.'

'To be honest, it's not a wall,' Kelly said, adding that the mix of technological enhancements and 'steel slat' barriers the president now wants along the border resulted from conversations with law enforcement professionals.

Along the same lines, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway called discussion of the apparent contradiction 'a silly semantic argument'.

'There may be a wall in some places, there may be steel slats, there may be technological enhancements,' Conway told 'Fox News Sunday.' ''But only saying 'wall or no wall' is being very disingenuous and turning a complete blind eye to what is a crisis at the border.'
Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who is close to the president, emerged from a Sunday lunch at the White House to tell reporters that 'the wall has become a metaphor for border security' and referred to 'a physical barrier along the border.'

Graham said Trump was 'open-minded' about a broader immigration agreement, saying the budget impasse presented an opportunity to address issues beyond the border wall. But a previous attempt to reach a compromise that addressed the status of 'Dreamers' - young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children- broke down last year as a result of escalating White House demands.

Graham said he hoped to end the shutdown by offering Democrats incentives to get them to vote for wall funding and told CNN before his lunch with Trump that 'there will never be a deal without wall funding'.

Trump has been throwing every argument he can on Twitter since the government shut down on December 21 to try and get the $5 billion it will take to build it.