“Any Republican that supports this garbage compromise, you will have to explain," Fox News host Sean Hannity said. | Ethan Miller/Getty Images Media 'Garbage compromise': Hannity warns Republicans not to back spending deal

President Donald Trump’s most ardent cable news defender cut away from his Monday night rally in El Paso, Texas, to issue a warning to Republican lawmakers: Don’t back congressional negotiators’ latest border deal.

“On this new, so-called compromise, I’m getting details,” Fox News host Sean Hannity said, referring to the tentative agreement reached by a bipartisan conference committee that would allocate roughly $1.3 billion for physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border.


“1.3 billion? That’s not a — not even a wall, a barrier?” Hannity said.

“I’m going to tell this tonight and we will get back into this tomorrow,” he said. “Any Republican that supports this garbage compromise, you will have to explain. Look at this crowd. Look at the country. Look at CBS News, even they say 72 percent of the American people want the heroin to stop, the cartels to stop, the gang members to stop, and those that wish us ill.”

Morning Media Your guide to the media circus — weekday mornings, in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

That statistic was an apparent reference to a CBS national poll released last week following Trump’s State of the Union address that showed 72 percent of those who watched the speech to Congress approved of the ideas the president articulated on immigration.

Hannity’s swift rebuke of what Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) described as “an agreement in principle” echoed the backlash from conservative commentators in December over proposed government funding measures.

Those detractors, including media personalities Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, viewed accepting any amount of taxpayer dollars less than the president’s $5.7 billion demand for a border wall to be a forfeit by the White House.