President Trump’s sales pitch for a border wall
What happened
President Trump this week pressed his case for a border wall in his firstever nationally televised prime-time Oval Office address, hoping to rally public support in a funding fight that has shut down parts of the government for more than two weeks. In a nine-minute speech, Trump depicted the situation at the southern border in dire terms, calling it “a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs” and describing several recent murders of American citizens by illegal immigrants. Trump called on the Democrats to accept his demand for $5.7 billion to start adding more than 200 miles of additional steel barriers to the existing 654 miles of fencing, and nearly $1 billion more to improve conditions for the thousands of migrant families being held in custody. “My administration is doing everything in our power to help those impacted by the situation,” Trump said. “But the only solution is for Democrats to pass a spending bill that defends our borders and reopens the government.”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, appearing alongside Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in the Democrats’ televised response, accused Trump of “manufacturing a crisis.” Pelosi emphasized that House Democrats have already passed a bill to reopen the government—the same bill that unanimously passed the Republican-controlled Senate during the last Congress in December. That bill contained $1.3 billion for border security, including enhanced surveillance technology, but nothing for new barriers. “Mr. President, reopen the government and we can work to resolve our differences over border security,” Schumer said, accusing the president of governing by “temper tantrum.”
Meanwhile, the consequences of the shutdown mounted, including long lines at airports affected by TSA agents calling in sick to protest working without pay, and there were signs that Republican support for the shutdown is wavering. Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Cory Gardner of Colorado and several House Republicans called for the government to be reopened while the debate over the border continues.
What the editorials said
How ironic that President Trump’s first Oval Office address was in response to “a crisis of his own making,” said The New York Times. Roughly a quarter of the federal government is shut down because Trump insists on funding for a “ludicrous border wall.” This will do nothing to deter the flood of desperate Central American asylum seekers, or to end the overcrowding and needless suffering and deaths caused by the White House’s mass-detention policies. But Trump promised his supporters a wall. So, he is
What next?
using this self-inflicted tragedy “as a justification for pursuing more wasteful, hard-line measures that most Americans do not support.”
“Trump doesn’t help his cause when he exaggerates, misrepresents, and misunderstands the facts,” said the Washington Examiner. For example, it’s not true that illegal drugs are flowing over unprotected sections of the border. The vast majority are smuggled through official border crossings in cars and trucks. But Trump isn’t trying to “manufacture a crisis.” There are already more than 10 million illegal immigrants living in the country as a result of our porous borders, a fact that undermines the rule of law. “Better physical barriers would help. Once we accept that basic truth, we can have a better debate.”
What the columnists said
If the wall is really answer to our border problems, asked Jonathan Chait in New York magazine, why didn’t Trump start seriously pushing for one until now? Republicans enjoyed unified control of the White House and Congress for two years, but did little to secure wall funding. Trump decided a wall was critical only after conservative pundits like Ann Coulter began mocking him for not delivering on his signature promise, triggering his fear that his base will desert him in 2020. “The U.S. doesn’t have a border crisis. Trump’s campaign does.”
The media won’t report this, but Trump’s proposal goes beyond a wall, said Mollie Hemingway in The Federalist. In addition to 234 more miles of fencing, President Trump called for 52,000 extra detention beds to ease overcrowding and $800 million to improve care for families at the border. Aren’t those things Democrats claim to care about? asked Michael Goodwin in the New York
Post. “It should be easy for the president and Dems to cut a splitthe-difference deal and move on to the next problem.” But Democratic leaders are dead set against giving Trump anything resembling a victory “out of bitterness and hatred for a president who won an election fair and square.” President Trump’s address doesn’t seem likely to change many minds or break the impasse, said
in The Washington Post. Republicans lost 40 House seats in the recent midterm election, with Trump campaigning heavily on border security. With the newly empowered Democratic House unlikely to budge on Trump’s demands for a wall, he may find it tempting to bypass Congress by declaring a national emergency at the border. This would potentially give Trump the power to use the military to begin building the wall. Democrats said an attempt to circumvent Congress would be illegal and trigger a constitutional crisis. Such a move would face immediate legal challenges, but it could be his “exit strategy”: Even if the courts stopped Trump, he would be able to show his supporters “that he was prepared to take the fight to the extreme.” Then he can agree to reopen the government.
“There is a real immigration problem on the border,” said David Frum in The Atlantic. But barriers won’t stop the influx of thousands of Central American families with children who are showing up and applying for asylum. It can be solved only by hiring more judges to hear asylum cases and quickly dispatch the majority who do not qualify back to their home countries. “But Trump has never wanted a solution. He has wanted a divisive issue and a personal monument.”