Trump wall rambles defy understanding
Donald Trump’s recent tweet regarding “The Wall” was a study in quintessential mushmouth.
“Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early,” The Donald warbled on Twitter. “Mexico will be paying, in some form, for the badly needed border wall.”
Funny, but I don’t recall all those commas and qualifiers when Trump was on the rally stage all last year, hand cupped to his ear, pumping the crowd with the chant, “And who’s gonna pay for that beautiful wall?” “MEXICO!!!,” they would all scream. As pathetic as the tweet was, it was positively Churchillian compared to the transcript of his bizarre interview with the Associated Press.
One website described it as “terrifying” and carried excerpts under the headline: “A con man with dementia is running our country.” That wasn’t too far off.
Indeed, I didn’t get too deep into our president’s meanderings about paying for the border wall before I began asking myself, “And what drug are you on, Mr. President?”
The AP’s Julie Pace asked Trump if he would sign a spending bill without funds for the wall.
“I don’t know yet,” Trump says. “People want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall. You’ve been to my rallies … ”
Trump then veers off into another rambling soliloquy on how he won the Electoral College and defied all the pundits. Pace finally steers him back to the subject of spending billions on a wall.
“Oh, I’m seeing numbers,” Trump tells her. “$24 billion, I’ll think I’ll do it for $10 billion or less. ... That’s not a lot of money relative to what we’re talking about.”
When you’re talking about spending those billions on a wall that even Republican legislators from the border states say they don’t need, instead of spending it on, say, health care … then it’s an obscene waste of billions.
As the president presses on, he begins to speak in tongues. Stay with me, here.
“If we stop 1 percent of the drugs from coming in … because we have that wall — they’re coming around in certain areas,” the president says, “but if you have a wall they can’t do it because it’s a real wall. That’s a tremendously good investment, 1 percent.” Oh yeah, terrific investment. Anywhere from $10 billion to $24 billion to choke off 1 percent of the drug flow, according to our peerless businessman president, who also happens to be a genius when it comes to bankruptcy.
The Donald promises “a super-duper, higher, better, better security, everything else wall” that shouldn’t cost us — not Mexico but the US of A — anything more than $10 billion … maybe.
And if you can’t trust the founder of that esteemed institution of higher fleecing, Trump University, especially after he’s shelled out $25 million to shut up a community of fraud victims … who can you trust?