Pressed again about the project, she said, “I certainly don’t think any efforts have been abandoned” to force Mexico to pay for the barrier. Later, when a reporter noted that Trump has stopped saying Mexico would fund the wall, Sanders responded: “He hasn’t said they’re not, either.”

So, you see, claiming he’s going to let the government close if Congress doesn’t pony up the money is just a backup plan, on the off chance that Mexico doesn’t pay for something that it has said, repeatedly and emphatically, there’s no way in hell it will pay for.

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Louise Linton Instagram-gate takes an unexpected turn

Earlier this week, Louise Linton, wife of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, posted a picture to Instagram of herself and her husband getting off of a government plane following their #daytrip to Kentucky, tagging every designer brand she was wearing. (Our conservative estimate put the entire ensemble at around $13,775.) It didn’t go over well. But what really riled the Internet hordes was Lady Linton’s response to a stranger’s comment (“glad we could pay for your little getaway”), wherein the Scottish-born actress simultaneously complained about how much she “sacrifices” in taxes and shamed the commenter for not being as rich, suggesting that she and Mnuchin—whose fortune comes from his time as a partner at Goldman Sachs and presiding over a “foreclosure machine”—do more for the country than poor people ever will. “You’re adorably out of touch,” she added, without a hint of irony.

Later, after Linton deleted the tirade and made her account private, it was reported that the couple would reimburse the Treasury for transportation costs when she travels with the secretary on official business. Through a publicist, Linton apologized for her post and response, saying “it was inappropriate and highly insensitive” (which was similar to the apology she issued after offending the entire country of Zambia). And yet the plot continues to thicken:

On Thursday, CNBC reported that the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (C.R.E.W.), had F.O.I.A.’d the Treasury for records relating to the “authorization for and the costs” of the #daytrip to Lexington, Kentucky, where the pair ostensibly traveled to visit the government’s gold stored in Fort Knox. C.R.E.W.’s hunch? That the jaunt didn’t actually have any real purpose beyond the opportunity for Mnuchin and Linton to be in a prime viewing location for Monday’s eclipse (Fort Knox’s location happened to be in the path of the totality.)

“A number of things don’t quite add up,” the organization’s director of communications, Jordan Libowitz, told me. “First, why was [Mnuchin] going to inspect the gold in the first place? He’s the first treasury secretary to visit [the gold vault] in nearly 70 years. No one has gone since 1948.” Second, Libowitz said, if this was “purely a government exercise, why was his wife coming along?” Third, given that the couple subsequently said they would reimburse the Treasury for Linton’s costs, “they knew this was an inappropriate use of taxpayer money. So we’ve requested the info and are . . . asking questions. We’re not saying this happened, [but] we’re saying this may have happened.”