'Fox & Friends' hosts defend Trump diverting $3.6 billion for military projects to pay for the border wall
- The co-hosts of "Fox & Friends" defended the Trump administration's controversial plans to divert billions of dollars in military construction funds to pay for a wall on the US' southern border.
- The Pentagon said that funding for a total of 127 projects would be diverted to pay for the wall, with $1.8 billion coming from domestic US military projects and $1.8 billion from projects abroad.
- Co-host Ainsley Earhardt said, "You have to ask yourself is it more important to fund some of these military projects or more important to fund the wall?"
- While the Pentagon emphasized that the existing projects were only being "deferred" until Congress could replace their funding, Democratic lawmakers slammed the move.
- Co-host Steve Doocy said, "the programs will still apparently be built as long as Congress reprograms other money or backfills it," with Earhardt adding, "the Democrats who are complaining about it, maybe they can fund it."
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The co-hosts of "Fox & Friends" defended the Trump administration's controversial plans to divert billions of dollars in military construction funds to pay for a wall on the US' southern border on Thursday morning.
On Wednesday, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced the Pentagon would be redirecting $3.6 billion in funding for various military construction projects to pay for new barriers along the Southern border.
The Pentagon said that funding for a total of 127 projects would be diverted to pay for the wall, with $1.8 billion coming from domestic US military projects and $1.8 billion from projects on US military bases abroad.
On "Fox & Friends," co-host Ainsley Earhardt said that building the wall was Trump's "most prominent campaign promise," adding, "You have to ask yourself is it more important to fund some of these military projects or more important to fund the wall?"
While the Pentagon emphasized that the existing projects were only being "deferred" until Congress could replace the funding, Democratic lawmakers slammed the move for weakening military infrastructure.
The redirected domestic funds include, among other things, money allocated to build and improve military housing and schools on military bases, to child development centers on Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, replace hazardous waste warehouses in Virginia, and $60 million in funding for the engineering center at the US Military Academy at West Point.
And the US territory of Puerto Rico will be one the most seriously affected localities, set to lose $400 million in military funding in existing military construction.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York wrote in a Wednesday statement that the diversion was "a slap in the face to the members of the Armed Forces who serve our country that President Trump is willing to cannibalize already allocated military funding to boost his own ego and for a wall he promised Mexico would pay to build."
Brian Kilmeade, another co-host, took a swing at the Democrats, saying, "it's amazing, watching the people that could not care less that President Obama's administration starved the military year after year and watched it rot away."
Despite Trump's frequent claims that Obama depleted the military, a New York Times fact-check from August 2018 found that "adjusted for inflation, Congress authorized more money for the Pentagon every fiscal year between 2007 and 2012" than Trump has in allocating $716 billion in defense funding for fiscal year 2019.
His colleague Steve Doocy said "the programs will still apparently be built as long as Congress reprograms other money or backfills it," with Earhardt adding, "the Democrats who are complaining about it, maybe they can fund it" - despite Congress already allocating money for these defense projects.
The $3.6 billion in construction funds from the Pentagon comes in addition to $600 million from the US Treasury Department and another $2.5 billion from the Department of Defense's drug enforcement activities all diverted to fund the wall, according to the Associated Press.
And CNN reported that the $3.6 billion in construction funding will subsidize 11 border wall projects in Southern California, Arizona, and Texas only covering 175 miles of construction on the approximately 2,000 mile-long border.