Arkansas governor: 'Bad precedent' to send privately funded guardsmen to border

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) said Sunday that sending a state's National Guard to the U.S-Mexico border using money from a private donor sets a “bad precedent.”

In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” anchor Dana Bash cited South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s (R) use of funding from Tennessee billionaire Willis Johnson to send an initial deployment of as many as 50 South Dakota National Guard troops to the southern border to respond to a record surge in migrants.

Other governors have paid for the deployment through taxpayer funding.

"Would you use a political donation to send your troops to the border?" Bash asked Hutchinson.

The GOP governor, who announced this week that he would send his state’s National Guard troops to the border, replied, “Not for this purpose,” adding that deploying the National Guard is a “state function.”

“I would consider that a bad precedent to have that privately funded,” he said.