Fox News host Watters says spending bill was ‘huge defeat’ for Trump

Fox News host Jesse Watters on Friday said the spending bill President Trump signed earlier in the day was “a huge defeat for the president on a signature issue.”

“It’s really really bad. There’s no way to spin it,” he said during a discussion on Fox News’s “The Five.”

According to Watters, who is often a vocal supporter of Trump, the president gave up too much — including funding for his proposed border wall — in order to increase military funding in the omnibus budget deal.

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“Well, I know one thing. Mexico’s not going to pay for the wall, and neither will we. Because it says there’s only going to be $1.6 billion for the wall, and you can’t even use the new concrete prototypes that [Trump] surveyed. And it’s only supposed to be for 93 miles,” Watters said. “The border is 3,000 miles, and the only fencing that is going to be done is backup fencing and repairs.”

He noted that Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) got funding that will be used for the Gateway rail project out of the bill, a project Trump had opposed as part of the deal.

“Cryin’ Chuck Schumer gets all the money he wants for a tunnel … and there’s no border wall funding,” Watters said.

“I know he wanted more money for the military, and that’s incredibly important,” Watters added. “But he sacrificed everything else to get it.”

Watters questioned how Trump would keep his promise to “never sign another bill like this again,” asking how the president would change the dynamics in Congress to ensure future spending bills contained funding for his legislative priorities.

“I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again,” Trump said when signing the omnibus legislation on Friday. “I’m not going to do it again. Nobody read it. It’s only hours old. Some people don’t even know what’s in it.”

Trump signed the massive $1.3 trillion spending bill despite threatening to veto the bill. He expressed his displeasure over Congress’s inability to compromise on funding for his border wall as well as a legislative fix for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival recipients.

“There are a lot of things that I’m unhappy about in this bill. There are a lot of things that we shouldn’t have had in this bill. But we were, in a sense, forced to if we want to build our military,” the president said Friday during an impromptu event after he signed the bill at the White House.

“My highest duty is to keep America safe,” he added. “Nothing more important.”