The president’s tweet on Wednesday announcing “the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military” caught the nation off-guard.
Secretary James Mattis of the Department of Defense was on vacation, and both lawmakers and news outlets were sent scrambling for answers.
But as the hours went on, more daylight emerged on possible motivations behind the surprise ban, and it might have something to do with border wall.
To explain, we have the co-writer of an article published by Politico, reporter Josh Dawsey joins us.
Now, it’s no secret that building the border wall is unpopular with Arizona Democrats in the House.
“This is nothing but a Wall to support the ego of Donald Trump. To fulfill a campaign promise that he did to energize his base and now we’re going to waste taxpayer dollars on that,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego at a press conference outside the Capital recently expressing his disapproval.
But why haven’t we heard of this connection between defense spending — which includes the wall — and transgender troop medical costs before? And is that really a motivation behind the president’s tweet?
For that, we turned to Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican in the House for his take. He says this “surprise” announcement was actually a result of weeks of behind-the-scenes work.
