“I need a bill that gives this country tremendous border security,” President Donald Trump said. “I have to have that.” | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images White House, in reversal, embraces Dreamer legislation The president’s comments came hours after he seemed to disavow a compromise immigration bill.

The White House on Friday evening walked back Donald Trump’s criticism of a House GOP bill shielding Dreamers from deportation, saying in a statement that the president would sign the legislation.

After a daylong, dizzying back-and-forth over Trump’s position, White House spokesman Raj Shah said Trump misunderstood a question on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning when he argued he would not sign a “moderate” immigration proposal scheduled for a vote next week.


Many on Capitol Hill — and even in the White House — believed Trump was referring to immigration legislation released Thursday, the product of weeks of negotiations between centrist Republicans, conservatives and GOP leaders. But Shah argued that Trump was instead knocking a proposal backed by moderates and Democrats that would codify the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program without any significant immigration crackdown.

“The President fully supports both the Goodlatte bill and the House leadership bill," Shah said, referring to a conservative DACA plan that's expected to fail next week, as well as the compromise bill released Thursday.

Trump, he added, "would sign either."

Trump’s apparent embrace of the bill is a boon to House leaders hoping to pass the text next week. Conservatives need the president to give them cover to vote for a bill that includes a pathway to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.

The vote is still expected to fall short because of opposition from immigration hardliners and some GOP centrists. But Trump's apparent criticism Friday morning would have led to an embarrassing spectacle in which only a few dozen lawmakers supported the plan, some leadership sources speculated.

Trump's earlier comments Friday might still spook skittish lawmakers, making passage difficult. The president has big-footed senior White House officials before, catching them off-guard and reversing official White House positions without so much as a warning. Republicans will spend all next week fretting about a repeat of such a situation.

The White House's support of the bill isn't entirely surprising. The new House proposal mirrors Trump's own framework to increase security, curb legal immigration and shield Dreamers from deportation. Not only that, top White House officials, including immigration hawk Stephen Miller, were working behind the scenes to whip support for the document. And the White House had drafted a policy statement saying the president would sign the bill.

But Trump heard conservative criticism of the proposal on TV, according to senior Republicans, and swatted the proposal down Friday morning.

“I’m looking at both of them,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” in an interview Friday morning from the White House lawn. “I certainly wouldn’t sign the more moderate one.”

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Hours later, the president added to the confusion with a tweet that demanded provisions that the compromise bill seemingly includes. “Any Immigration Bill MUST HAVE full funding for the Wall, end Catch & Release, Visa Lottery and Chain, and go to Merit Based Immigration. Go for it!“ he wrote.

Before Shah's clarification, the president's statement appeared to have dealt a fatal blow to the bill. GOP leaders knew few Republicans would back a bill Trump rejected, so they delayed a planned vote-counting session slated for Friday.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise even threatened to withdraw his support for the package. His office told Breitbart that the Louisiana Republican, who wants to be speaker someday, would not whip support for any immigration bill the president opposed.

After the morning interview, GOP leaders and White House aides scrambled to get Trump back on message. And early on, senior Republicans predicted that Trump would not only walk back his comments but fully endorse the compromise bill. His comments on TV, they said, left him enough wiggle room to say he was discussing a Democratic proposal that did not include his wall.

That's exactly what the White House did — it just took more than eight hours.

Before the White House clarification, however, some conservatives applauded the president.

"He's correctly judging the American people's opinion on this subject; we're not there yet," said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.). Asked what more he needed in the compromise bill, Perry seemed aghast: "Enforcement! Enforcement! We can't keep on having these half-measures that don't fix the problem."

Trump's initial comments came after Ryan and other members of the House leadership team told reporters that they’d described their bill to the president and he was “excited” about it. Ryan has stressed to reporters that he has been working "hand in glove" with the administration in writing the bill.

Indeed, senior White House policy adviser Miller came to Capitol Hill earlier this week to encourage wary conservatives fearful of backlash from the base to support the plan. And GOP leaders in meetings talked about the possibility of Trump as well as the White House helping them whip support.

Had the White House not reversed Trump's position, GOP leaders would have found themselves backed into a corner, having to ask Republicans to vote against their own president on a controversial topic that divides the party most.

Leaders told worried Republicans to keep calm on Friday and that a statement clearing things up would eventually follow.

"We're waiting for some clarification on what that really means," said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.). "We don't know."

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), who helped craft the compromise bill, said he was told that Trump "will sign it."

"I think once he has a chance to digest it, he will sign it," Diaz-Balart said, though he declined to say who told him that, and cautioned that it would have to be verified with the White House. Diaz-Balart admitted Republicans "have a big problem" if Congress backs a compromise package and he vetoes it. "We need the president to look at it, and look at in detail... But I am hoping we can get his support."

Trump's initial remarks seemed to be a rebuke to Ryan and his team, who’ve spent hours huddled in the speaker’s office trying to hash out an immigration bill that moderate Republicans from districts with big Latino populations and conservatives could back. Both sides have given ground in the talks: Moderates begrudgingly accepted strict enforcement measures, while conservatives for the first time were open to providing citizenship for Dreamers.

What’s more, the GOP plan reflected Trump’s own “four pillars” proposal that includes a pathway to citizenship, an end to the diversity visa lottery program, curbs on family migration and $25 billion for the border wall. It would also increase border security and interior enforcement.

Trump's rejection of the bill would have been a huge blow to moderate Republicans who this spring forced the immigration matter to the forefront. Banding with Democrats, they threatened to take over the floor, circumvent their own party and pass legislation to shield Dreamers from deportation — unless Republicans could agree on their own plan to address the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

That set off the intense negotiating sessions that led to the compromise bill released Thursday.

John Bresnahan contributed to this report.