Donald Trump praised some of his biggest allies on Fox News and conservative media but wasn’t as warm toward Ann Coulter — who has largely abandoned him in recent months over lack of progress on his promised border wall with Mexico.
“Sean Hannity has been a terrific, terrific supporter of what I do. Not of me. If I changed my views he wouldn’t be with me,” Trump said a Q&A session with media after he declared a national emergency on the Southern border. “Laura’s been great. Laura Ingraham. Tucker Carlson’s been great.”
Trump expressed his frustration with Coulter, however, and the media that he said overstated her influence.
“Ann Coulter, I don’t know her. I hardly know her. I haven’t spoken to her in way over a year. But the press loves saying Ann Coulter. Probably if I did speak to her she would be very nice. I just don’t have the time to speak to her,” he said. “But she’s off the reservation but anybody that knows her understands that. I haven’t spoken to her, I don’t follow her, I don’t talk to her.”
Once one of his most loyal supporters, Coulter has increasingly ripped the president on Twitter in recent weeks and warned that not building a wall on the southern border would doom his reelection hopes in 2020.
“He seems to think ‘the reservation’ is HIM, not his campaign promises,” Coulter tweeted following the press conference.
Trump did, however, say he still “liked” Coulter and cited her accurate prediction during a June 2015 appearance on “Real Time With Bill Maher” that he would become president.
Trump’s comments came as he officially announced that he would declare a state of emergency to secure the necessary funding to begin construction of his border wall with Mexico.
“We will have a national emergency. And we will then be sued… And we will possibly get a bad ruling. And then we will get another bad ruling. And then we will end up in the Supreme Court,” Trump said, and also predicted he would ultimately be triumphant.
Later today, Trump is expected to sign a funding bill compromise to prevent another government shutdown.