President Trump cares what Ann Coulter thinks, and he proved it Friday by pretending he doesn’t.

After Trump said he was declaring a national emergency on the southern border, a reporter asked him what influence conservatives in the media had in his decision. He expressed admiration for Rush Limbaugh being able to talk for three hours and thanked Sean Hannity for all his support. But then he got to Coulter.

Trump made sure to note that he “hasn’t spoken to her in way over a year” and that, “I just don’t have the time to speak to her.” He also said she’s “off the reservation.”

It’s as if Trump was asked about a wife who left him for a better-looking, richer man. His bitterness is obvious and the reason for it is simple.

Following Trump's speech, Coulter wrote to me in a text message that "it’s the nicest thing he could say about me, completely absolving me of responsibility for his total capitulation on immigration, the issue that put him in the White House."

Coulter is the only prominent Trump supporter who isn’t excusing him for failing on the border wall.

[Related: Trump says he's not a slave to conservative media: 'They don't decide policy']

When Hannity and Limbaugh were playing nice with every Republican running for the nomination in 2016, Coulter was the one to go all in with Trump and insist that he would not only become the nominee, but would probably win the whole election.

That was a risk no other prominent conservative media took so early on, and she was right.

Now, more than two years into Trump’s presidency, he has failed to fulfill the central promise of his campaign, which was to build a wall on the southern border that would halt the steady stream of criminals and drugs pouring in from Central America.

That failure comes even though Trump had Republicans in control of both the House and Senate for two years. There are a million excuses for why he didn’t get it done, one of which he used Friday at the White House.

“I'm very disappointed in certain people, one in particular, for not having pushed this faster,” he said, blaming former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a stupid cover that suggests Trump, having just been elected president, was at the mercy of the House speaker.

Unlike virtually every other conservative media figure, Coulter doesn’t give Trump a pass on the one campaign promise that, more than anything else, made him a political force.

Trump can hate her for it, but excuses aren't going to work in 2020.

