Trump vs. the stubborn facts
There were a lot of problems about Donald Trump’s primetime appeal to the American people this week about the crisis along America’s southern border. Chief among them: the notable absence of a crisis.
As Trump prepared his address from the Oval Office, the hallowed site from which previous presidents have broadcast at moments of special national challenge (viz: the Cuban missile crisis, the 9/11 terror attacks...), the New York Times took the temperature of opinion in towns along the border.
These are the places that should be feeling the effects of the unfolding disaster that Trump sought to evoke. Yet the clear message came back — “no crisis here.”
“Enough about the wall already,” said a lady in Columbus, N.M., hard by the border with Mexico. “We have other problems here that need fixing.” Others said there are problems, but they’re mostly the result of how the Trump administration is handling border issues. The mayor of McAllen, Tex., complained about federal agencies dumping immigrants into overcrowded city shelters. And so on.
That’s the problem with trying to whip up national angst about a border crisis when stubborn reality refuses to fit the desired narrative.
Diligent fact-checkers, including the Star’s own Daniel Dale in Washington, instantly pointed out the yawning gaps between Trump’s version of the truth and the documented facts.
To wit: A wall wouldn’t stop the influx of illegal drugs, which are mostly smuggled through official ports of entry. People in the U.S. illegally are actually less, not more, likely to commit crimes than American citizens — despite Trump’s roll-call of bloody crimes committed by “illegal aliens.” His claim that Mexico will somehow pay for a wall through the renegotiated North American trade deal makes no sense. And there’s no evidence that terrorists arrive across the southern border, as the president has claimed.
More generally, there’s less sense of national crisis about the border than there was even in 2016, when Trump got campaign crowds on their feet with his chant of “build that wall!” The caravan invasion that the administration puffed up last fall fell flat, and the number of arrests of “illegals” remains at a historically low level. It’s hard to build a case for emergency action, in other words, when the full-blown emergency fails to show up.
There is, however, a humanitarian tragedy along the border, though that’s largely of the Trump administration’s own making. Its policy on separating children from families last year was cruel and immoral, to the point that Trump himself recoiled. Locking tiny children up in detention camps, where several died, was too much even for him.
And the administration has made it much more difficult to claim asylum and have requests processed in an orderly manner. The result is a lot more people are being held in detention facilities, and they’re spending much more time there. It’s a mess that demands a solution, even if it isn’t the kind of national security crisis the president claims he faces.
Despite all this, Trump is still talking about declaring a national emergency at the border if he doesn’t get the funding he wants from Congress to build a wall. That would give him the authority to build it on his own, but his failure to make an effective case to the public makes it a lot less likely that he’ll have support beyond his loyal “base” for such an incendiary move.
At this point, Trump’s wall has become a lot more than a promise or a project. It’s the symbol of who he is — the man who divides rather than unites, the leader who inflames rather than calms.
He may never get the wall he campaigned for in 2016. But he’s already succeeded at building higher barriers between nations, and among his own people.
There’s less sense of national crisis about the border than there was even in 2016, when Trump got campaign crowds on their feet with his chant of ‘build that wall!’