Democrats, ‘No Wall!’ — Trump, ‘I Give!’
“Who looked stronger politically after the shutdown ended?”
Nancy Pelosi – 43 percent, President Trump – 35 percent
Fox News Poll, taken February 10 through 12
Whenever our president leaves office, I suspect he’ll write another (ghostwritten) book.
I would suggest he calls it “The Art of Surrender.”
The man who thinks of himself as a Maestro of Dealmaking is showing he’s nothing more than putty in the hands of his opponents.
He made his pledge to build a border wall, and that Mexico would pay for it, the centerpieces of his presidential campaign.
He’s reneged on both of those pledges.
Last February, there was a proposal backed by Democrats that would have earmarked $25 billion for a border wall.
Trump attempted a gambit.
He wouldn’t agree to the proposal without being able to include much tougher immigration policies.
The Democrats didn’t bite.
As 2018 was ending, Trump made it clear he wouldn’t budge on any deal that didn’t include $5.7 billion that would be used to build 230 miles of border wall.
(He had originally pushed for a 1,000-mile addition to the existing border wall)
Instead, there was a proposal for $1.6 billion for 65 miles for a border wall.
Trump refused it, and that led to the longest government shutdown in history.
So, last week, with Democrats now in charge of the U.S. House, they and Republicans forged a deal in which only $1.375 billion would be spent on only 55 miles of border fencing.
Trump, knowing that he’d taken a beating at the hands of the Democrats (and especially the guileful Nancy Pelosi), waived the white flag of surrender.
The hunter, as they say, got captured by the game!
Of course, his first instincts were to court his staunchest rightwing supporters at Fox News.
According to a report in the New York Times, he made calls to Sean Hannity and to Lou Dobbs (at the Fox Business Network) to let them know that he might be giving in now — but he still hasn’t given up his fight for a border wall.
His fight for a border wall had gone from $25 billion to $5.7 billion to $1.6 billion, all the way down to $1.375 billion.
If he’d kept it up, Congress may have sent him a box of Legos and told him to build a wall with his own hands.
This is quite a comeuppance for a president who stood in front of his cheering followers in El Paso, Texas, last week and continued telling his lies about the need to keep America safe from those marauders from the south.
During his State of the Union message, he’d told his lie about El Paso being extremely violent until a border wall was built nearby. And then the crime, according to him, had dropped precipitously.
The truth is, El Paso didn’t have high crime before the wall. And it didn’t drop after the wall.
El Paso’s city officials had been angered by Trump’s assertions about the level of crime in their community.
Fact-checkers and journalists across the country had corrected Trump.
That didn’t do any good.
Because days later he traveled to El Paso for one of his speeches. He lied to his adoring crowd when he said, “They’re full of crap when they say it hasn’t made a big difference. I heard the same thing from the fake news. They said, ‘Oh, crime actually stayed the same.’ Didn’t stay the same! It went way down. …These people, you know, you’d think they’d want to get to the bottom of a problem… not try and pull the wool over everybody’s eyes.”
This from a guy who frolics in “pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes.”
In that case, the people who live in that community, and who are fully aware that he wasn’t telling the truth about the level of crime there, still cheered him when he misstated the facts.
That says, no matter how dishonest he might be about anything, there are still people who will support him, no matter what.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.