Donald Trump contradicts chief of staff John Kelly hours after Mexico wall announcement

Donald Trump has said his idea of a wall along with border with Mexico “has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it”, despite comments made by his chief of staff to the contrary.

Speaking on Wednesday, John Kelly told Fox News that all politicians take campaign positions that “may or may not be fully informed”, and that Mr Trump had changed his views on “a number of things” since entering the White House.

“He’s very definitely changed his attitudes toward the DACA [Dreamers] issue and even the wall once we briefed him,” Mr Kelly added.

But, in a tweet posted on Thursday morning, the US President said his vision for the barrier had never altered.

“The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it. Parts will be, of necessity, see through and it was never intended to be built in areas where there is natural protection such as mountains, wastelands or tough rivers or water,” he said.

The proposed wall has attracted criticism for being costly and unrealistically difficult to build ever since Mr Trump first touted it on the campaign trail.

The President’s chief of staff on Wednesday said customs and border protection experts had surveyed the borderlands last year and told Mr Trump a wall “would not be realistic” in some areas.

Certain plots of land along the border “are so wild and untamed that there is no traffic that goes through them”, Mr Kelly said. In other places “fencing would suffice”, he said.

Mr Trump has insisted that Mexico will foot the bill for the construction, but Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has insisted – with equal vigour – that it will not.

In a second tweet posted on Thursday morning, Mr Trump again said Mexico would fund the barrier. “The Wall 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 US,” he said.

“The $20 billion dollar Wall is ‘peanuts’ compared to what Mexico makes from the US. NAFTA is a bad joke!”

Immigration has come under renewed attention in recent days since Congress is scrambling to reach a deal on the issue before federal funding expires on Friday, risking a government shutdown.

Democrats want the bill to include protections for immigrants who entered the US illegally as children, known as “Dreamers”, while some Republicans want to scrap the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme.

Mr Trump intends to visit the intends to visit prototypes of the border wall at the end of January, following his first state of the union address.