United States President Donald Trump has contradicted his chief of staff John Kelly over proposals for a wall along the southern US border with Mexico, tweeting that his opinion on a wall "has never changed or evolved from the first day he conceived it."
Trump's comments on Twitter came a day after Kelly told Democratic lawmakers that some of the hard-line immigration policies Trump advocated during the campaign were "uninformed," reported the Washington Post.
Later during a television interview, Kelly attempted to downplay the disparities with the President.
"He has evolved in the way he looks at things. Campaign to governing are two different things, and this president has been very flexible in terms of what's in the realm of the possible," Kelly told Fox News.
Kelly's comments came amid a shaky effort to craft an accord protecting hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation. Part of negotiators' problem has been uncertainty over what Trump would accept.
Those immigrants, who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, benefitted from the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which Trump scrapped last year.
According to the reports, Kelly told lawmakers some parts of the border do not need a wall and there will be no physical barrier "that Mexico will pay for."
Trump tweeted that "parts will be, of necessity, see through" and wrote that the wall "was never intended to be built in areas where there is natural protection such as mountains, wastelands or tough rivers or water."
He added that it "will be paid for, directly or indirectly, or through longer term reimbursement, by Mexico, which has a ridiculous $71 billion dollar trade surplus with the U.S."
Despite Kelly's efforts, lawmakers have been frustrated with Trump's shifting position on DACA and a broader immigration deal.
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