Fox News’s Shepard Smith pushes back on Trump: ‘There’s no new wall … not true’

Fox News chief anchor Shepard Smith on Wednesday disputed President Trump’s recent remarks about border wall construction, saying on air that “there is no new wall.”

Smith’s remarks were in response to a tweet from the president that said the wall is “going up very fast.”

{mosads}”So far, despite the president’s claims to the contrary, there is no new wall,” Smith said. “Existing barriers have been replaced. Same span. The total of repaired barrier is about 60 miles along that 2,000-mile border.”

“The president also said in the tweet that the wall is going up rapidly. It is not. As we just reported, there’s no new wall. Only replacement for walls which were in need of repair or upgrade. Those are the facts,” Smith added.

Smith’s report also referenced a Washington Post article that said Trump has grown worried about not completing the wall by the 2020 election, and that he urged aides to do whatever is necessary to get it done. And if they broke the law, he would pardon them, the Post reported.

Trump called the report “fake news” and tweeted that his wall was “going up very fast, despite total Obstruction by Democrats in Congress, and elsewhere!”

During the same segment, Smith dissected Trump’s claim that Congress approved $92 billion in aid for Puerto Rico after it was devastated by Hurricane Maria in 2017.

“We checked with sources including the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” Smith said. “The latest numbers show that as of the end of June, the federal government has allocated $42.7 billion for Puerto Rico … About $21 billion is binding. In other words, Congress has to pay it. Of that, Puerto Rico has received less than $14 billion. So $14 billion or less. Not $92 billion.”

NBC News reported last month that Congress had allocated roughly $43 billion for Puerto Rico as of May, but the island had received less than $14 billion as of May. Trump signed a bill in June providing another $1 billion in assistance.