Trump Checkmates Himself

We can now say this about the president, thanks to the “failing” paper of record: His “idea” for a border wall was neither his nor was it even an idea in the actual sense of something formulated by discernible cognitive function.

The wall was “a mnemonic device of sorts,” reports the New York Times, created by campaign aides to keep an aggressively anti-literate candidate on message about immigration. If the last president to enter office while fading into senescence took his campaign rhetoric as literally, HUD would’ve built an actual shining city on a hill and DARPA would’ve been tasked with finding a way to permanently make it morning in America. At what point Trump started taking the wall both “literally and seriously” we may never find out–my guess is the moment he first got applause for it.

Trump appeared ready, however grudgingly, to sign a bill in December funding the government through the holidays without funding for a border wall. This outraged certain media personalities whose affluent livelihoods depend on instigating the lowing herd of Trump voters.

The end of this seems fairly obvious. Congressional Republicans, bruised by the midterms, are steadily folding under pressure from national polls and constituent phone calls; large majorities see no reason to furlough 800,000 federal workers over something so unserious. Polling will continue to show what it always has: an actual wall on the border is not a high priority for most Americans, and subjecting hundreds of thousands of families to acute economic insecurity over this farce is stupid and cruel. And the blame will rest mostly with the president and his party.

Those interested in serious immigration and border security policies, particularly conservative ones, see their already meager political capital being frittered away. Border barriers are not nearly as important as hiring more border patrol agents, hiring more asylum-claim adjudicators, building more facilities where asylum-seekers can stay while awaiting the government’s decision about their claim, getting the latest security technology to entry points (where most drug trafficking happens), and revamping our visa and asylum systems. There are already 700 miles of border barriers. Extending them would be a mere a footnote to actual border security–and irrelevant to immigration reform.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/01/12/trump-checkmates-himself/