Day 721: Trump heads to border for photo-op two days after saying it wasn’t worth his time
Trump continues to shoot himself in the foot on border wall issue
Just two days ago, Donald Trump told TV anchors that his upcoming trip to the southern border was a mere charade. He noted that the jaunt wouldn’t make an iota of difference in the border wall debate or end the government shutdown. Proving it was about mere optics, Trump readily admitted:
“But, these people behind you say its worth it,” he said, gesturing to Communications Director Bill Shine, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.
So Thursday, Trump headed to the border for his photo-op and rallied behind his “steel slats” talking point. However, those slats — like all of the wall prototypes tested — are far from impenetrable: they can be cut through with a saw.
An internal February 2018 U.S. Customs and Border Protection report — a redacted version of which was first obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request by KPBS — described a test run by the Department of Homeland Security in late 2017, in which D.H.S. employees were challenged to breach all eight border-barrier prototypes, both concrete and steel, with anything they had on hand. Per the report, all eight prototypes failed the test, with the steel-slat design favored by the president falling prey to a common saw.
In addition to going through the wall, Trump was shown another way that the wall could easily fail. A border official displayed recently-discovered tunnels that breach the border underground. All of the evil things that Trump alleges are coming from Mexico — people, drugs, weapons — can simply come through beneath billions of dollars worth of steel or concrete.
Finally, Trump tried to back off his campaign pledge that “Mexico will pay for the wall,” a talking point he has famously rallied his base around for years. He’s now claiming he never said they’d pay for it in actual cash.
Except he did, directly on his campaign website.
Nearly out of ideas with a government shutdown languishing for three weeks, Trump seems to be down to just two to get his wall.
First, he could try to claim a “national emergency” along the border and force government funding for his wall. However, that idea is fraught with challenges and will certainly draw substantial litigation regarding whether Trump has that power. It also opens Pandora’s box about what is truly a national emergency, something that could be an issue for Republicans when Democrats take back the White House one day.
The other idea may be the single worst idea of Trump’s tenure: taking money for disaster relief and reallocating it towards a wall.
No longer is Mexico paying for the wall: rather, in a reverse Robin Hood scenario, the people trying to rebuild their lives as a result of something they had zero control over may be paying for the wall.
In a single day Trump was shown that a wall can be easily penetrated or tunneled under. He backed off his pledge to make Mexico pay for it and had his team see if they could steal the money from disaster-ridden communities. What was meant to be a great day for optics turned out, unsurprisingly, exactly the opposite.
721 days in, 741 to go
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