WASHINGTON – The first member of Congress to endorse Donald Trump for president doesn’t envision one of Trump’s main campaign promises – a wall at the Mexican border – ever becoming a reality that stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.

“I have called it a virtual wall,” Rep. Chris Collins said in an interview with The Buffalo News.

“Maybe we will be building a wall over some aspects of it; I don’t know,” the Clarence Republican said of Trump’s proposed barrier to keep illegal immigrants and drugs from crossing the southern border.

Collins, who has become one of the presumptive GOP nominee’s main media surrogates, also cast doubts on another central Trump campaign promise: the candidate’s vow to deport the nation’s 12 million undocumented immigrants.

“I call it a rhetorical deportation of 12 million people,” Collins said.

He then gestured toward a door in his Capitol Hill office.

“They go out that door, they go in that room, they get their work papers, Social Security number, then they come in that door, and they’ve got legal work status but are not citizens of the United States,” Collins said. “So there was a virtual deportation as they left that door for processing and came in this door.”

Collins added: “We’re not going to put them on a bus, and we’re not going to drive them across the border.”

After making those comments, Collins said Trump would surely disagree with them.

“I’m not speaking for Donald,” Collins said. “Those were my opinions.”

Collins’ comments came in an interview about the areas of policy disagreement between the New York billionaire businessman and the second-term congressman, who has gone on television dozens of times in recent months to defend the candidate.

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Those differences – on immigration and programs such as Medicare, in particular – are vast. And in the interview, Collins brushed those differences away by basically saying he doesn’t look at Trump’s campaign promises as promises. They are, he said, merely the opening offers in a series of policy negotiations.

“Sometimes Donald says some absolutes,” Collins said. “And a CEO saying that means, ‘Challenge me on it. Let’s have a debate on it.’ … That’s Donald’s background. It’s not people hanging on every word, every nuance and saying that you can never modify what you said.”

Protection of beneficiaries

What’s more important, Collins said, is that he thinks Trump has the leadership ability to serve as an effective president.

“I’m comfortable with his judgment as a CEO, and I’m comfortable with his 60,000-foot level vision for America,” Collins said, noting that many of the details in Trump’s proposed policies are yet to be worked out.

On immigration, Collins said, both he and Trump have acknowledged their policy disagreements.

“And yet he still likes my support, and I say it’s a conversation and it’s in its early stages,” Collins said. “We do need to secure our borders.”

Collins added that he was encouraged that Trump recently said on Fox News Radio that his proposal for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration was “just a suggestion.”

The congressman said that he disagrees with an overall ban on Muslim immigration and that he thinks Trump may have oversimplified his views on the issue to some extent.

“When I hear the word ‘Islam,’ it doesn’t necessarily mean terrorist extremists,” Collins said. “It’s a religion. That’s me, and that’s why I say I don’t agree with the way he has said it.”

Collins said he thinks that what Trump meant to say was that Syrian refugees who are undocumented and who can’t pass an FBI security check because of their lack of documentation should be banned until the FBI director can say they are safe to admit to the United States.

“I disagree with his broad-based ban, but I am comfortable that this is what he really meant,” Collins said.

Similarly, Collins said he was encouraged that a Trump adviser recently said the candidate would consider changes to Social Security and Medicare, even though Trump himself has said he would not agree with any changes that hurt individual beneficiaries.

Collins has long argued that Social Security and Medicare must be reformed in order to remain financially solvent in the long term, and he has been a strong backer of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s proposal to turn Medicare, the government’s health care system for the elderly, into a voucher system with much more involvement from the private sector. Collins continues to back major changes to the programs, and he thinks Trump will, too.

“His focus was ‘I’m not going to hurt people,’ ” Collins said. “And there are ways to do this without hurting people. … What we know is what we’ve got is going to bankrupt us, so we have to make some level of changes.”

Similarly, Collins said he expects Trump to embrace deficit reduction, even though it has not been a central issue for him in the campaign so far.

“Here’s what I think Trump will be doing: He’s going to say we need to balance our budget. To get there, we need fundamental tax reform,” Collins said. “We’ve got to get the country going. We’re going to have to put America first; we’re going to have to talk about tariffs and other things to get jobs back. … Now, let’s convene a working group to talk this through.”

Collins has been especially supportive of Trump’s trade agenda, which includes opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and the possibility of tariffs on Chinese goods in hopes that this would revive America’s manufacturing base.

Dismissing media criticisms

The congressman, who estimates he has given at least 80 interviews about the Trump campaign since endorsing him in February, frequently defends Trump’s qualifications and dismisses much of the criticism that the candidate has been facing.

And Collins did that again when asked about a Washington Post report that said Trump identified himself as a spokesman of his in phone interviews in the early 1990s.

“The country’s issues are quite significant, and the fact that the press is even bringing something like that up is crazy, and it’s not going to register with anyone,” Collins said.

Similarly, Collins dismissed a New York Times report that criticized Trump’s interactions with women, noting that the first woman quoted in the article has strongly disputed the Times report.

Above all in the interview with The News, Collins portrayed Trump as a president who would make deals for the good of the country – even if they veered from his campaign promises.

Collins said he expected Trump to adjust his positions on the issues as he made the “pivot” from appealing to the Republican base in the primary season to appealing to the full electorate in the fall.

Trump’s likely opponent in the fall election, Democrat Hillary Clinton, has already made clear that she wouldn’t think much of it if Trump started making such moves.

“People say, ‘Well, maybe he doesn’t really mean it,’ ” she said at a rally in Louisville, Ky., last week. “If you are running for and serving as president, you better mean what you say.”

Collins acknowledged that if Trump were to move away from his campaign promises, it’s possible that he could alienate voters who really expect him to build a wall at the Mexican border, who really expect him to deport illegal immigrants and so on.

“I suppose there could be some fallout,” Collins said. “Let’s say that happens. He’s going to get more votes in the center. We just need him to win.”

email: jzremski@buffnews.com