Trump Tells ‘Nut Job’ Coulter He’s Stopping ‘Invasion’ at Border

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said he’s “stopping an invasion” of the U.S. in a pair of tweets directed at conservative commentator Ann Coulter, whose criticism reportedly helped crystallize his decision to forge ahead with a record long federal government shutdown in December.

Addressing “Wacky Nut Job” Coulter, a former ally, Trump said he’s “winning on the Border” and that major sections of the U.S.-Mexico border wall are being built and renovated with more to come. He also tweaked “certain Republicans” for being “sadly unable to fight.”

“With another president, millions would be pouring in” to the U.S. through Mexico, Trump said. “I am stopping an invasion” with the effort to use executive action to renovate and construct a new wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, he told Coulter and his 59 million Twitter followers.

Just two years after the right-wing pundit published a laudatory book called “In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome,” the pair have fallen out over his border wall tactics, failure to secure billions of dollars from Congress for construction, and subsequent move to declare a national emergency.

In December the Senate easily passed a temporary spending measure without any money for the border wall after getting signals from the White House that Trump wouldn’t press the issue. But an outcry from conservatives, including Coulter and talk show host Rush Limbaugh, saw the White House do an about-face that resulted in the lengthy and damaging shutdown.

The pair have swapped barbs since then. Trump dismissed Coulter’s role in December’s decision-making during the press conference in which he announced he would declare a national emergency at the border, saying he didn’t have time to speak to the commentator.

“I hardly know her. I haven’t spoken to her in way over a year," Trump said, adding that Coulter was “off the reservation.”

Coulter publicly dismissed Trump’s plan as overreach, and said in a radio interview that the president was “fooling the rubes with a national emergency.”

"Forget the fact that he’s digging his own grave," Coulter said at the time. “The only national emergency is that our president is an idiot.”

The president is staying this weekend at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, and spent part of Saturday golfing with LPGA pro Lexi Thompson, the White House said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ros Krasny in Washington at rkrasny1@bloomberg.net;Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny, Linus Chua

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