Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter has gone from defending to attacking President Donald Trump due to his failure to secure funding for a long-promised wall on the southern border.
After initially suggesting Trump would be impeached on Twitter after details of the omnibus bill emerged, the author of E. Pluribus Awesome: In Trump We Trust lashed out again during a speaking engagement at Columbia University Tuesday night.
“I knew he was a shallow, lazy ignoramus, and I didn’t care,” Coulter said during the interview with conservative comedian Rob Long, first reported by the Daily Beast.
Coulter further conceded that she was “heartbroken” by Trump’s failure to deliver on the “big, beautiful” wall he promised voters (he opted instead to sign a spending bill that included funding for just 30 miles of new fencing on the southern border). She also suggested Trump abandoned his tweeted threat to veto the spending bill after Chief of Staff John Kelly told him he could not travel to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend if he followed through on the threat, forcing a government shutdown.
When asked if she felt like an “idiot” for defending Trump repeatedly on cable news and writing a laudatory account of his presidential campaign, Coulter said she had no regrets.
“I regret nothing. I’d do the exact same thing. I’d write the exact same book, with the exact same title,” she said. “We had 16 lunatics being chased by men with nets running for president — and Trump. So of course I had to be pedal-to-the-metal for Donald Trump. I’d been waiting 30 years for someone to say all these things.”
Trump has reportedly taken notice of Coulter and other formerly reliable defenders of his administration who have lately reversed themselves, prompting him to consider alternatives to secure funding for the wall. He reportedly told House speaker Paul Ryan last week that he believes the money should come out of the military’s budget.