This Friday night, the federal government partially shut down due to a lack of approved funding. President Donald Trump has maintained that Congress should cough up $5 billion for his long sought border wall, and this Saturday, as the government languished through a continued shutdown, Trump reiterated his aims.
He tweeted:
‘The crisis of illegal activity at our Southern Border is real and will not stop until we build a great Steel Barrier or Wall. Let work begin!’
It’s ultimately remarkable that he could fit so much nonsense into two sentences.
For one, he has — wrongfully — claimed work already started on his wall. He’s done so repeatedly, in fact, including on Twitter and while speaking in front of reporters. In reality, there’s some of the long in place fencing and such at the southern border, but there’s no wall — which leads into the next issue.
Walls are a pretty straightforward concept. If someone buys a house, they’re not going to be fine if the walls happen to actually be anything from a chain link fence to piles of trash. Yet, Trump has insisted that his “wall” actually stands poised to be made of steel slats — in other words, exactly what’s at the border in some places already.
Trump continues to present himself as so self-obsessed that the nation is left having conversations about the fact that the definition of “wall” is pretty straightforward and widely accepted.
Trump has yet again backed himself into a corner with his nonsense rhetoric as the actual adults in the room continue to try and work around his babbling and get the government back open.
It’s also worth again reiterating that there is no crisis at the southern border of the magnitude Trump has claimed. Mexico isn’t invading. In fact, over time, undocumented border crossings have continued a generally downward trend.
The crossings that do occur do not cost the United States the hundreds of billions of dollars that Trump has claimed.
In the middle of all of this, the government will be remaining shut down through Christmas, considering the Senate adjourned with no deal this weekend — signifying just how out of place the current leadership really seems.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
