The Wall Is Trump's Last Stand, And He Must Fail
Gregory Bull - Associated Press
As the shutdown continues to cripple the government, and both sides of the political aisle continue to dig in their heels, it’s important to remember that the truth about immigration is not hard to find. The data is out there for anyone who’s uninformed or curious. Reputable sources using verifiable data have shown us that (1) Illegal border crossings have been on the decline for years, and (2) A wall would be an ineffective and wasteful strategy if illegal border crossings were the crisis the President and his sycophants pretend it is.
As such, it’s also important to remember, that this fight was never about the facts. The fights never are, with this administration. Facts and the Trump administration are diametrically opposed to each other.
The administration gaslights, distracts, deflects, and outright lies when presented with facts. This was never a battle of ideas.
This was the last stand of a cornered President who’s on the losing side of a culture war he created. A president so desperate to distract from headlines detailing his very serious legal jeopardy, that he figured an unpopular shutdown over an unpopular wall was the lesser of two evils.
In many ways, it feels like a fitting end to this presidency. A presidency that almost surely will not see the entirety of a four year term.
The past week was met with two bombshells. The first one being that the President’s own F.B.I. launched an investigation into him after firing Comey, out of fear he was a Russian asset, and a followup story that didn’t help to quash that fear, when it was reported that Trump concealed details of his meetings with Putin from even senior officials within his own administration.
Couple that with the fact that Mueller is reportedly close to finishing his report , and that the administration has hired 17 new lawyers to fend off both Mueller himself and Democrats at large, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Trump miraculously overcomes every investigation he’s currently fighting and stays out of legal peril for the remaining two years of his term. The likelihood of that happening shrinks with every new headline. Impeachment, and a possible subsequent indictment, are very much a reality.
Hence why we’re here. In the middle of the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Because it temporarily changes the aforementioned narrative.
But the eventual outcome of this shutdown won’t be of any help to Trump, either.
The longer this goes on, the more unpopular it becomes. The President and Republicans as a whole have seen their percentage of blame rise as the days continue to mount.
Trump isn’t concerned about how that looks, though. He’s unmoved by the stories of government employees missing paychecks, or government services as a whole struggling to live up to their duties and provide for the people.
From his perspective, as sick as it sounds, he’s more concerned about the culture war I alluded to earlier.
Donald Trump ran his campaign on a cultural ideology, not nuanced political wonkiness.
The message was simple: We just had a black president for 8 years, the demographics of our country are shifting, and now we’re gonna let a woman be in charge? Fuck that.
He played to the most racist and sexist segments of our population, and to help drive his point home, he was given a mnemonic device that was easy to feed to his base: A wall.
A wall protects us from the dangerous brown people. A wall will help bring about a white ethnostate, or at the very least, send the message to other countries that if they’re not white, we don’t want them.
Not unlike the Muslim ban he tried to instate his first week in office.
He knows that the bulk of people still left on his train that’s almost certainly headed for derailment, are the xenophobic extremists who voted en masse for him in 2016.
If he loses them, it’s over.
Again, there’s a very legitimate reason to believe he won’t be eligible to run in 2020, but he has it in his head that his legal obstacles will be easier to tackle than the backlash he’ll face if he doesn’t deliver on the wall.
The Democrats, who will no doubt be pressured to cave, must realize this, and must hold strong.
For starters, the majority of Americans agree with them that a wall would be a useless and costly endeavor.
Not to mention, they gained 40 seats in November in the biggest wave election since Watergate primarily because people want to see a check on this president.
In that regard, they themselves have to worry about losing their base if they cave.
Liberals won’t exactly be happy to hear that the people they voted for, handed the president the biggest victory yet of his culture war, at a time when he was at his most politically and legally vulnerable.
People will use stories of federal employees going without pay to make their case to Democrats. They’ll paint a picture of Democrats getting something huge in return for caving, like DACA, or stricter gun control laws, or even medicare for all. Just give the man his wall, and get a king’s ransom in return.
What they won’t tell Democrats - are the stories of hispanic students being harassed by white classmates chanting “build that wall” in the cafeteria.
They won’t remind them of the children who died in ICE custody, or the ones separated from their parents. Or the families teargassed at the border after making thousand mile treks on foot, with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
They won’t tell Democrats that if they cave now, they’re setting a dangerous precedent in which the president will be encouraged to shutdown the government any time he doesn’t get his way.
The president boxed himself in. He ran a campaign on a promise that he could never keep. Hitched his wagon to an idea that must never see fruition.
It’s not on Democrats to pull him out of said box.
Trump’s wall is nothing more than a physical representation of the darkest corners of xenophobia. A primal summation of fear, bigotry, and hate
It must never see construction, and certainly not with Democrats having a hand in its realization.
This is Trump’s last stand, and he knows it.
The jig is up.
He must fail for all to see.