Out there...

Flake: Trump's border wall plan is 'out there'

By DIAMOND NAGA SIU

Sen. Jeff Flake is throwing punches back at President Donald Trump, this time bashing his proposal for a massive wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“This notion of a 2,000-mile wall has always been just — for anybody who spends time on the border — just a bit, you know, out there,” Flake said Thursday in an interview with ABC15 in Arizona.

The Arizona senator has been a long-time critic of Trump and even published a book this year called "Conscience of a Conservative" that heavily criticized the president, but their recent relationship has been especially contentious.

He and the president disagree on border protection, and following Trump’s Arizona rally on Tuesday, where he taunted Flake for being “weak on borders, weak on crime,” the Arizona senator has shifted his tone back-and-forth when discussing Trump.

“My position is I work with the president,” Flake also said in the interview with the ABC affiliate. “Vote with the president when I think he’s right, and I oppose him when I think he’s wrong.”

Although he dodged direct questions Thursday about his opinions on Trump, Flake offered to show the Arizona-Mexico border to the president. He argued that the landscape there already does not require a wall to protect the area.

Trump has not offered any such public conciliatory gestures. The president referenced the senator as “the flake” while meeting with potential challengers for his seat before the Phoenix rally on Tuesday, and has repeatedly whacked him on Twitter.

“Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is running against Flake Jeff Flake, who is WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate,” Trump tweeted Aug. 17. “He’s toxic!”