So no National emergency...yet.
I'm curious as to the reaction of others, but I did not find this a terribly effective speech. But at the same time I recognize that Trump was not speaking to me. Trump's arguments (the ones that were not demonstrably false) were essentially emotional: the specific grisly details of crimes, and the simple idea that you are safer if you put a wall around your house.
Finally, as part of an overall approach to border security, law enforcement professionals have requested $5.7 billion for a physical barrier. At the request of Democrats, it will be a steel barrier rather than a concrete wall.
I wonder if Mexico had requested that the wall be made out of steel slats, so they could see the Americans, would he have accepted?
The Democratic response I found flat and predictable, but also essentially correct.
I suppose at some point someone will come up for a diplomatic term that equates more border fencing with a wall, everyone will declare victory and go home.
Rachel Maddow reviewed this bit of transcript of the call between Trump and Mexican President Nieto, which goes to the heart of Trump's problem with the wall:
[Trump to Nieto] But the fact is we [Trump and Nieto] are both in a little bit of a political bind because I have to have Mexico pay for the wall – I have to. I have been talking about it for a two year period, and the reason I say they are going to pay for the wall is because Mexico has made a fortune out of the stupidity of U.S. trade representatives. They are beating us at trade and they are beating us at the border, and they are killing us with drugs. Now I know you are not involved with that, but regardless of who is making all the money, billions and billions and billions – some people say more – is being made on drug trafficking that is coming through Mexico. Some people say that the business of drug trafficking is bigger than the business of taking our factory jobs. So what I would like to recommend is – if we are going to have continued dialogue – we will work out the wall. They are going to say, “who is going to pay for the wall, Mr. President?” to both of us, and we should both say, “we will work it out.” It will work out in the formula somehow. As opposed to you saying, “we will not pay” and me saying, “we will not pay.”
I love the conflation:
WE are in a political bind because
I promised to have
YOU pay for the wall.
Trump's solution? Just have Mexico and the United States say "We're working on the problem". The man has absolutely no idea how to translate a campaign promise into a political reality. He never did. And it is pretty clear he never thought about the problem from the perspective of the President of Mexico. If Trudeau won an election saying he was going to build a wall on his southern border and have the United States pay for it, do you think Trump would agree to say they were "working on the problem"? Trump's nationalism is an extension of his narcissism, and he is so narcissistic he didn't think about nationalism from the Mexican perspective before the conversation.
Shown below is Trudeau's proposed Canadian border wall.
Maybe time to think of this problem from
the Leslie Jones perspective
