During a speech at an energy conference on Wednesday, President Trump listed Colorado as one of several states where he wanted to build a wall.
“We’re building a wall on the border of New Mexico, and we’re building a wall in Colorado,” he said. “We’re building a beautiful wall, a big one that really works, that you can’t get over, you can’t get under. And we’re building a wall in Texas. And we’re not building a wall in Kansas but they get the benefit of the walls that we just mentioned.”
It appeared to be a gaffe. Mr. Trump regularly talks about building a wall along the United States’ border with Mexico, but this time he brought up Colorado, hundreds of miles north of the border.
“Well this is awkward,” Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, a Democrat, said in a tweet about the president’s comments on Wednesday. “Colorado doesn’t border Mexico. Good thing Colorado now offers free full day kindergarten so our kids can learn basic geography.”
In a tweet early Thursday, Mr. Trump suggested that he had mentioned Colorado “kiddingly,” noting that he had also mentioned Kansas as a place where a wall would not be built.
“Refered to people in the very packed auditorium, from Colorado & Kansas, getting the benefit of the Border Wall!” the tweet said.
Mr. Trump regularly makes off-the-cuff comments at events, and the border wall is one of his favorite talking points at rallies, routinely drawing cheers from his supporters. Audience members behind the president gave him a standing ovation shortly after he mentioned Colorado on Wednesday.
Mr. Trump has also called for a complete shutdown of the southern border and spoken privately about shooting migrants in the legs and fortifying a border wall with spikes, a moat, alligators and snakes, according to administration and White House officials. Mr. Trump denied those reports.
Mr. Trump was speaking at the Shale Insight Conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh. Protesters had gathered outside the convention during Mr. Trump’s appearance, and some made their way into the venue.
“All right, go home to Mom,” the president said at one point in his speech, addressing the protesters; he tweeted a video of that exchange on Thursday. “Explain to Mom that you tried to take on very powerful people, and many of them physically as well as mentally. That’s not a good thing to do. Not in this room, be careful.”
Mr. Trump’s rallies and tweets are playing out against a backdrop of a House impeachment inquiry into the president’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Democratic rivals. A steady procession of witnesses have filed through Capitol Hill this week testifying as to whether Mr. Trump abused his power to advance his political interests.