Trump's ugly border wall and what will happen when innocents are impaled?

If you're an ardent Trump supporter, the president is not making things easy for you.  Published in The American Prospect by Paul Waldman 

Trump's hideous border wall

MaineWriter- has anybody considered the pictures of innocent immigrants who will undoubtedly be impaled by this ugly medieval structure?

Defending the indefensible: This is particularly true when it comes to his "big, beautiful wall" that was supposed to stretch from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, not just a physical barrier to immigrants but a symbol of all the hopes you poured into Trump's candidacy. Two years into his presidency it still hasn't risen out of the desert, it doesn't look like it's getting closer, and all the president offers you for his failure to deliver on his promise is excuses and misdirection.

For a brief moment last week, it appeared that some sense would prevail in Donald Trump's White House. Just as he had on multiple occasions before, the president threatened to veto the spending bill necessary to keep the government open unless he got funding earmarked for his border wall. But in the past Trump has always backed down, persuaded that it wasn't worth shutting down the government. That looked like what would happen this time as well: a temporary bill to keep the government open for a while, putting off the argument over the wall for another day. Without the votes to make it happen, he appeared to have no other choice.

That is, until this most capricious of presidents heard from the people with the most influence over him: conservative media figures. Trump may be casting off advisers left and right, but he still seeks the counsel of Fox News each and every day ("He spends ever more time in front of a television, often retreating to his residence out of concern that he is being watched too closely," reports The New York Times). And what he saw there changed his mind.

Trump probably thought he had gotten them all used to a cycle: Promise a showdown over the wall, then retreat, but claim victory anyway. This time, however, he made things bad by pledging in front of dozens of cameras in an Oval Office meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, "I am proud to shut down the government for border security...I will be the one to shut it down. I'm not going to blame you for it." That raised expectations on the right too high, and when it appeared he would back off, there was a mini-rebellion. "It was supposed to be a 'big beautiful wall' with a 'big beautiful door.' Now it’s just an open door with no frame. Unreal. #BorderDisorder #GOPFail," tweeted Fox host Laura Ingraham. Trump's most loyal supporters "want their wall and they want it now," said Dan Bongino, guest-hosting for Trump's good friend Sean Hannity. Similar notes were sounded on conservatives talk radio. Trump was watching it all unfold, and realized he had to come through for his base, no matter the cost.

So now the government is shut down, a testament, Trump no doubt hopes, to his commitment to the wall. But one can't help but wonder: Have Trump's supporters noticed how the wall keeps shrinking, to the point where it's a shadow of its former imagined splendor?

First it was supposed to cover the entire border, but not anymore. Then for some reason Trump decided that it's not a wall at all, but "artistically designed steel slats." He even sent out a picture of it on Twitter.  

Ah yes, so beautiful.

And what about the most important part of the entire promise Trump made in 2016, that Mexico would pay for the wall? Make no mistake, that was the very heart of the pledge, making clear that it was not just a physical barrier but a symbol of our restored strength. This is something Trump has always been acutely aware of; in a phone call on January 27, 2017, just a week after he took office, Trump begged then-president Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico to stop saying that Mexico wouldn't pay for the wall. 

"If you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that," Trump said, explaining that "this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important." Peña Nieto refused to budge, saying that "this is an issue related to the dignity of Mexico and goes to the national pride of my country."

Peña Nieto was no fool. He knew that paying for the wall would be a national shaming for Mexico, which was precisely the point. Trump promised his supporters that Mexico's humiliation and subjugation would be the vehicle for the restoration of their own dignity and pride.

And what does Trump say now? He can't possibly admit that it was a preposterous idea from the beginning and anyone who believed it had to have been an idiot. So the brain trust at the White House came up with an answer to the inevitable question: Mexico is paying for the wall! How? Because we made some minor adjustments to NAFTA, and if that works out there might be some increased exports to Mexico, and that means they paid for it so he kept his promise. All White House staffers are now required to repeat this bit of laughable nincompoopery.

So the big, beautiful wall across the entire border that Mexico will pay for is now some steel slat fencing in certain places that Mexico is not paying for. Mission accomplished?

But if Trump is wondering whether his base will accept it, he probably doesn't have to worry. Not because they're stupid enough to believe what he's telling them on a rational level, but because emotionally speaking, they have little choice. If you voted for Trump because of things like building a wall and having Mexico pay for it, are you going to now admit that you got swindled by America's most prominent con artist, just like any gullible enrollee of Trump University? That he was obviously lying all along and you were too dumb to see it? What would that make you?

It would make you a sucker, that's what. And nobody wants that. So don't be surprised when the next time your local paper does one of its regular "In Trump Country, Trump Supporters Still Support Trump" dispatches, little has changed.*

*MaineWriter-  I'm sooooooo glad to read this last sentence. In my opinion, the media that reports those ridiculous stories create massive assumptions about the populations being interviewed.  I was particularly angry with NBCToday when they sent a reporter to Kenosha Wisconsin to interview about four "suckers" who supported Donald Trump.  The interviewer made it appear as though there were no people in Kenosha, those who opposed stupid Donald Trump.  Guess what?  There are 100,000 (one hundred thousand) people who live in Kenosha!  Four people do not speak for Kenosha!

Donald Trump's Twitter war against immigrants

Tweets from Donald Trump become increasingly threatening to innocent people fleeing oppression as the immigration crises continues to grow along the US and Mexican border. Children are still housed in concentration camps while separated from their parents and while more Central American refugees are marching north to seek asylum.  I'm positive Donald Trump doesn't understand this concept, but the Hispanic population in Mexico and Central America existed for eons longer than the European immigrants who colonized the area. In fact, they will outlive and outnumber any resistance to their migrations. Nevertheless, Donald Trump wages a Twitter war against these innocent people.

Reported in The Guardian (a wonderful source to read real news!)

Trump threatens to close US-Mexico border over Honduran migrant caravan

Honduran immigrant caravan marching towards Texas.  I hope that at least some among these brave people are keeping journals about their harrowing experiences.

In fact, The Guardian published a photographic essay about this caravan at this link.

Trump also threatened to deploy the military to stop caravan which plans to head through Mexico toward the US border

Donald Trump is threatening to deploy the US military and close the southern border with Mexico if a convoy of migrants from Central America is allowed to keep moving northwards.

The group of would-be immigrants, which has now grown to as many as 4,000 people, left Honduras and plans to head through Mexico toward the US border, infuriating Trump.

The president made his threats in a series of tweets early on Thursday morning, demanding that the Mexican government turn around the convoy.

“I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught – and if unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!” he said.

Trump has previously threatened to cut off millions of dollars in aid to Honduras, a plan he reiterated on Thursday, saying he was “stopping all payments to these countries, which seem to have almost no control over their population”.Sign up for the new US morning briefing

The Mexican government has warned that anyone entering in an “irregular manner” – without a passport and visa – faces detention and deportation, and on Wednesday, 500 federal officers including riot police were deployed to the border city of Tapachula, where the migrants will start arriving on Thursday.

It was not clear if the troops would stop the migrants crossing or merely observe them enter, as Guatemalan police did when the caravan left Honduras.

Mexico’s outgoing president, Enrique Peña Nieto, will host emergency talks with the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, on Friday. His successor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador – who will be inaugurated on 1 December – has pledged to issue work visas for Central Americans to deter them for migrating to the US.

Trump has portrayed the caravan of migrants, which includes many families traveling with children and fleeing poverty or gang violence, as a threat to the United States.

It would take several weeks for the group to travel to the US border. Trump made a similar threat to cut off aid to Honduras over another caravan of migrants in the spring, which was never carried out.

Then, the Mexican government allowed hundreds of migrants, mainly Hondurans, to reach the US border, infuriating Trump, who initiated the family separation policy soon after. The latest caravan is much larger, and hundreds more are preparing to leave Honduras in coming days.
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It was unclear how Trump intends to close the entire US-Mexico border although earlier this year he called up some military units to enforce border security. US troops are currently deployed on the frontier with Mexico, with national guard members from Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California also working on border security.

“I am watching the Democrat Party led (because they want Open Borders and existing weak laws) assault on our country by Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, whose leaders are doing little to stop this large flow of people, INCLUDING MANY CRIMINALS, from entering Mexico to U.S.,” Trump tweeted on Thursday.

No evidence has emerged of criminal affiliations among the members of the caravan, who have mostly told reporters they are fleeing gang violence and poverty, and are traveling as a group for protection from criminals who target migrants for robbery, rape and kidnap.

Trump has frequently portrayed undocumented immigrants to the US as a criminal threat and in league with Democrats – a tactic also adopted by many Republican candidates in the ongoing midterm election campaign.

A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found a stark divide on the issue: among voters who support a Republican candidate for Congress, 75% called illegal immigration a “very big” problem, making it the highest-ranked national problem for GOP voters.

By contrast, only 19% of voters backing the Democratic congressional candidate rated illegal immigration a very big problem. Democrats were more likely to rank affordable healthcare and gun violence as major problems.

The latest statistics show that the number of families crossing the border with children has surged to record levels, the Washington Post reported. Border patrol agents arrested 16,658 family members in September, which is the highest total ever for one month and an 80% increase since July.

But overall figures for illegal entry from Mexico are much lower than in previous periods. During the 2018 fiscal year, agents arrested 396,579 people along the border, a 30% increase since 2017 – which had the lowest illegal immigration numbers in the last 56 years.

“The assault on our country at our Southern Border, including the Criminal elements and DRUGS pouring in, is far more important to me, as President, than Trade or the USMCA,” Trump tweeted, referring to a trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada. “Hopefully Mexico will stop this onslaught at their Northern Border. All Democrats fault for weak laws

In the past, the Mexican government has demonstrated a willingness to detain and deport Central American migrants upon request by the US.

In 2014, Mexico launched the Southern Border Plan after President, Barack Obama, declared the surge in unaccompanied minors seeking refuge at the US border an “urgent humanitarian crisis”.

Tens of millions of dollars in US aid supported the deployment of new technologies and thousands of Mexican troops to patrol alongside immigration agents along established migrant routes.
More than 151,000 Central Americans were detained in 2016 – almost 90% more than in 2013 before the US-backed policy was implemented.

Speaker Paul Ryan talks tax cuts but Mexico wall costs billions

Bernstein Research, an investment research group that tracks material costs, has said that uncertainties around the (Mexican border wall) project could drive its cost up to as much as $25 billion. (This insane campaign promise by Donald Trump goes into the hopper of , "What are they thinking?" They're not!)

It's cruel to create a border wall with Mexico at the expense of American benefits to support Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for the poor.  But, House Speaker Ryan is obsessed with tax cuts while Donald Trump is equally fixated on building an expensive Mexico border wall with US tax dollars paying the up front costs. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nietosays: "México dijo que no pagará!"

It's counterintuitive for Speaker Paul Ryan, who is obsessed with tax cuts, talking about "reforms", while Donald Trump takes tax money to build a border wall with Mexico.  It's like, Speaker Ryan is thinking in another dimension, a place where logic, reason and arithmetic float around like conceptual bubbles in a glycerin jar.

Speaker Ryan speaks about tax cuts and reforms like they're conceptual bubbles in a glycerin jar. He isn't connecting with reality.

Americans do not want to spend money on a stupid border wall with Mexico!  Those who want this barbaric show of bigotry don't realize how paying for the monster barrier will mean cutting expenses where we need the most humanitarian support- in social safety nets and benefits paid for by workers who receive Social Security and Medicare.  Although Social Security is supposed to be in a "lock box", meaning the FICA insurance isn't to be used for any purposes other than to pay beneficiaries, in fact, the Congress has borrowed from the fund without paying back the monies. Speaker Ryan has no intention of paying back the beneficiaries who contributed to the FICA fund so, therefore, he's just going to cut the program so the debt will be absorbed in the net reduction to the entire fund.  Meanwhile, Donald Trump is obsessed with building a border wall to harm innocent Mexicans, even though many are being deported, even without a "wall" to keep them out. Cutting beneficiaries retirement and medical care are terrible ways to treat hard working Americans, who have paid into Social Security and Medicare, and the wall is cruel treatment targeting innocent and hard working Mexicans. Besides, just think about it, the Mexicans and Hispanics are "First Nations" peoples. In other words, Hispanic ancestors were here in the Americas before any of us who claim US Citizenship. We are the immigrants!

Now, Donald Trump is taking back his claim about Mexico paying for the stupid wall because, frankly the Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto said "No!". Therefore, because Donald Trump wants to provie his dictatorship over all of us, it turns out, he's putting American tax money into the constructon of a project that won't succeed.  The wall won't work, it costs too much money, there will be sabotage of the construction and tunnels will simply be created to get underneath the barrier.

Newsweek and Reuters reports:U.S. TAX PAYERS TO FRONT INITIAL COST ON TRUMP'S WALL, NOW PROJECTED TO COST $21.6 BILLION BY REUTERS

Trump’s “wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border would be a series of fences and walls that would cost as much as $21.6 billion, and take more than three years to construct, based on a U.S. Department of Homeland Security internal report seen by Reuters on Thursday.

The report’s estimated price-tag is much higher than a $12-billion figure cited by Trump in his campaign and estimates as high as $15 billion from Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The report is expected to be presented to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John Kelly in coming days, although the administration will not necessarily take actions it recommends.

The plan lays out what it would take to seal the border in three phases of construction of fences and walls covering just over 1,250 miles by the end of 2020.

With 654 miles of the border already fortified, the new construction would extend almost the length of the entire border.

Many cost estimates and timelines have been floated since Trump campaigned on the promise of building a wall. The report seen by Reuters is the work of a group commissioned by Kelly as a final step before moving forward with requesting U.S. taxpayer funds from Congress and getting started on construction.

A DHS spokeswoman said the department does "not comment on or confirm the potential existence of pre-decisional, deliberative documents."

A White House spokeswoman said it would be “premature” to comment on a report that has not officially been presented to the president.

The report said the first phase would be the smallest, targeting sections covering 26 miles near San Diego, California; El Paso, Texas; and in Texas's Rio Grande Valley.

The report assumes DHS would get funding from Congress by April or May, giving the department sufficient time to secure contractors and begin construction by September. Trump has said Congress should fund the wall upfront, but that Mexico will reimburse U.S. taxpayers. Mexico has said it will not pay.

México dijo que no pagará!

Several U.S. congressional delegations are visiting the border this month to assess funding needs, according to several people familiar with the travel plans.

The report shows the U.S. government has begun seeking waivers to address environmental laws on building in some areas. It also shows the government has begun working with existing contractors and planning steel purchases for the project.

Trump told law enforcement officials on Wednesday, "The wall is getting designed right now."

The report accounted for the time and cost of acquiring private land, one reason for its steep price increase compared to estimates from Trump and members of Congress.

Bernstein Research, an investment research group that tracks material costs, has said that uncertainties around the project could drive its cost up to as much as $25 billion.

The second phase of construction proposed in the report would cover 151 miles of border in and around the Rio Grande Valley; Laredo, Texas; Tucson, Arizona; El Paso, Texas and Big Bend, Texas. The third phase would cover an unspecified 1,080 miles (1,728 km), essentially sealing off the entire U.S.-Mexico border.

Barriers to Construction

The report lays out costs to cover the border with barriers, but funding constraints and legal battles are likely to place limits on those plans.

It also does not account for major physical barriers, like mountains, in areas where it would not be feasible to build.

A source familiar with the plans said DHS may have to go to court to seek eminent domain in order to acquire some of the private land needed to cover the final and most ambitious phase.

The first phase, estimated to cost only $360 million, could be a relatively easy way for Trump to satisfy supporters eager to see him make good on his campaign promises to limit illegal migration. But the rest of the construction will be markedly more expensive, covering a much larger stretch of land, much of it privately owned or inaccessible by road.

In addition to seeking eminent domain and environmental waivers, the U.S. government would also have to meet the requirements of the International Boundary and Water Commission, a U.S.-Mexico pact over shared waters. The report estimated that agreement alone could bring the cost from $11 million per mile to $15 million per mile in one area.

Donald Trump sustains his campaign on fear of immigration

Although Donald Trump continues to lie about who he says will pay for his "impenetrable" wall against Mexican immigrants, (Mexico said "no #f8735!-way"), he doesn't explain how he intends to pay for the massive border security he promised to include in this heinous policy.

Enrique Peña Nieto president of Mexico.

Clearly, Trump told Predident Peña Nieto one thing and his zealous followers in Phoenix AZ something else. No softening.

Moreover, it certainly flies in the face of who we are as Americans, as Donald Trump continues to soak up the political oxygen, precisely because he builds on unjustified fear of immigrants, with a particular focus on anti Muslim paranoia. 

Hypocrisy notwithstanding, this anti-immigration anxiety makes no sense.  Every single, bar none, American and our ancestors, are the products of immigration. Donald Trump's mother Mary Ann was a Scottish immigrant, not even sure she was naturalized at the time he was born.  In fact, Donald Trump's grandfather Friedrich and grandmother Elisabeth were born in Germany, and emigrated to the United States. Their son Fred Trump married Donald Trump's mother Mary Ann MacLeod, who was born in Scotland and met Donald Trump's father during a vacation trip to New York.

Yet, Donald Trump doubles down on his anti-immigration fueled campaigning, reported in "Controversy of the week" in The Week (September 16, 2016)


Trump can't soften bigotry, writes columnist Eugene Robinson.

"So much for the Trump 'pivot'", Robinson wrote, in The Washington Post. After Donald Trump's visit to Mexico on Wednesday, August 31st, where he did "his best to sound sober and statesmanlike" in a meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, it looked as though Trump's promised "softening" on immigration had finally arrived.
Nevertheless, later that day, the old Trump resurfaced with a vengeance in Phoenix AZ. At a raucous rally for supporters, the GOP nominee reiterated his pledge that our southern border will be secured by an "impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful" wall, while also promising to hire 5,000 new border patrol agents and create a "special deportation task force."

On "day one" of his presidency, Trump shouted, his administration will start deporting illegal immigrants who have committeed crimes in this country- a number "Trump wildly inflated to 2 million. Once these "criminal aliens" are gone, as well as an estimated 4.5 million who have outstayed their visas, Trump will apparently turn his attention to the remaining 6 million illegal immigrants, who may or may not be given a path to legalization.

Indeed, Trump's Phoenix speech sounded "threatening", said Rich Lowry in Politico.com, but "beneath the bombast", the Phoenix speech was substantive and sensible about immigration, something not heard previously from Trump. Border security and the deportation of criminal aliens makes a lot of sense, as does Trump's insistence that US immigration policy serve the interests of America and its workers, not the welfare of foreigners.  (Still missing is how to pay for such a draconian position. Maybe the border financials are buried in Trump's tax returns.)

Trump's earlier cruel promises, to deport all 11.5 million illegal immigrants were never more than fantasy, said Charles Krauthammer, in The Washington Post. 

(Excuse my honestly here, but since when does Charles Krauthammer give credibility to "fantasy"?)

Out of political necessity, Trump found his way to "the only immigration solution" that makes any sense: Secure the borders first, aggressively enforce current immigration law to get rid of the "bad guys" (however they may be defined), and only then offer legalization to those who meet our terms.

You're trying to make Trump sound reasonable, said Timothy Egan in NYTimes.com.  

Instead, his Phoenix speech was actually on the "the darkest visions of the American experience that any major party nominee has ever given."  Trump not only denegrated and threatened the "lawn cutters, sheetrock hangers, fruit pickers, or nannies we see in every community," he called for cutting back on legal immigration, admitting only those who meet his standards for "merit, skill and proficiency."

In fact, that policy would have ruled out most of the Irish, Italian, Scandinavian, and Jewish immigrants who came to the US (even ruled out, probably, his own mother Mary Anne!), over the last 150 years, out of desperation andhope for a better life. During his trip to Mexico, Donald Trump proved he's "a coward", said Peter Beinart, in TheAtlantic.com. What kind of straight talking tough guy calls Mexicans "terrific" and showers them with compliments, when he's within their borders, then breaks out the harsh rhetoric the minute he's safely back inside the US?

Frighteningly, that's the behavior of a candidate with "a fatal flaw", said John Fund in NationalReview.com. When Donald Trump first announced he was "softening" his harsh immigration stance and flew to Mexico to meet with Peña Nieto, it made Democrats very nervous. Would he finally give wavering Republican-leaning centrist voters the assurances they need to take a chance on Trump? But, then, at the rally in Arizona, Trump couldn't help but throw 'red meat' to his angry, roaring acolytes (those basket of deplorables). With a golden opportunity to show he can be presidential, Donald Trump decided he'd rather look tough and strong, which he thinks means belligerent and bigoted.

"If Donald Trump loses in November, it will be because he simply lacks the self-discipline to reach voters beyond his base."

Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to get away with spewing chaotic public policy while the media struggles to keep up with holding him accountability for his lies.