Is Trump rowing back on his threat to make Mexico pay for the wall?

When Donald Trump began his run for the White House, he put building a wall with Mexico at the heart of his campaign. ‘I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words’, he cried after gliding down his golden escalator way back in June 2015. Mark his words indeed. For while the wall is still very much the backbone of his plans for government all the indications are that he will use a rather more prosaic form of funding to achieve it, using the standard Congressional appropriations procedures rather than a brazen cross-border raid.

House Republicans have begun preparing the ground. On Thursday they began briefing that using existing legislation and conventional sources of money would be the fastest way to get on with the work. That’s all very well, but what about those heaving call and response sessions where Trump asked his heaving rallies ‘Who’s going to pay for the wall?’ to be answered with 10,000 voices shouting back: ‘Mexico’.