Don't matter who did what to who at this point. Fact is, we went to war and now there ain't no goin' back. I mean, shit, it's what war is, you know? Once you in it, you in it. If it's a lie, then we fight on that lie. But we gotta fight.
Many years ago, I asked a client of mine – the manager of a regional airport along the Florida coast – about his strikingly elegant, gold cigarette lighter. "It is a perk of the job," he replied. "From time to time, when I arrive at work in the morning, I will find that drug smugglers will have abandoned a small plane on the tarmac. One time, they left this lighter behind, sitting on the wing."
Our southern border may be a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, as Donald Trump suggested in his Oval Office speech this week, but according to reports by the Drug Enforcement Administration, only a tiny share of those drugs are carried by individuals through the holes in existing border walls and fences that Trump proposes to replace with his bigger wall. Instead – if the DEA reports are to be believed – the lion's share of illegal drugs make their way into the country through a variety of other means, including cars and tractor trailer rigs through legal ports of entry, fishing boats, private aircraft (like the one my client described on the tarmac in Fort Myers), tunnels that go from Mexico to safe-houses on the U.S. side of the border, and delivered door-to-door by U.S. Postal Service Priority Mail.
If the DEA data were not enough to undermine Trump's argument for his wall, the Department of Homeland Security went the extra mile to debunk the President's argument in a report published in late 2017. In that report, the DHS estimated that successful illegal crossings along the southwest border declined by 91% from 2000 to 2016, and that over the ten year span from 2006 to 2016 the number of "got aways" – those who cross illegally and are not arrested or turned back – declined by 83%. Overall, the DHS reports suggests that the overall level of illegal crossings is now down to levels last seen in the 1970s.
It probably goes without saying at this point that Donald Trump's Wall is not about public policy. It is not about taming the $500 billion illegal drug trade that he pointed to in his speech. It is not about the 4,000 terrorists that Sarah Sanders claimed crossed the southern border, or the crimes committed by immigrants that Trump cited in his speech. Rather, the wall is simply a rallying cry. Or, to be more precise, it is an applause line. Trump said it best in an interview with the New York Times editorial board in January 2016, before a single primary vote had been cast: “You know,” he commented at the time, “if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of, maybe thinking about leaving, I can sort of tell the audience, I just say, ‘We will build The Wall!’ and they go nuts.”
Trump's speech this week was a spectacle of lies and dissembling. As DEA and DHS data suggest, there is no national security crisis at the border; to the contrary, the number of illegal crossings has declined dramatically over the past decade. It turns out that the 4,000 suspected terrorists Sanders referred to was a reference to State Department data on suspected terrorist arrivals at U.S. airports, while the number who have sought to enter the country via the southwest border turned out to be six – but not before Vice President Pence embarrassed himself by defending Sanders' claim on TV. Trump's penchant for pumping up crowds with stories about immigrant crime ignores the fact that native-born Americans commit crimes at a greater rate than those who arrive at our shores. And if Trump's objective, as he suggested in his speech, is to crack down on fentanyl and opioids flooding into the country – which should be his concern as those drugs are disproportionately impacting the lives and livelihoods of his base voters – he might better direct his rhetorical outrage at prescription drug regulation, the U.S. Postal Service that delivers drugs illegally purchased on the Internet, and Chinese President Xi Jingping, whose country is the major source of fentanyl production.
Donald Trump, as has long been evident, seems to love to lie. Ted Cruz made the argument that it was a pathological condition most eloquently during the Republican primaries, a view widely shared by Republicans before they did an about face and threw their lot in with him. Last month, Ann Coulter – one of Trump's most ardent supporters among the right wing commentariat – jumped on board. It was her piece in Breitbart entitled Gutless President in Wall-less Country that helped push Trump to walk away from a budget agreement he had said he would support and instead to head down the path that led to the government shutdown, and ultimately to the Oval Office speech. In her piece, Coulter excoriated Trump as a narcissist and sociopath who lied to his core supporters, claiming that he either "never intended to build the wall and was scamming voters all along, or he has no idea how to get it done and zero interest in finding out."
The correct answer is that Trump was scamming his voters all along. He ranted about the Wall for the simple reason that – as he told the New York Times editorial board – it worked. Just like Birtherism worked and his attacks against the Central Park Five worked. For his entire career in public life, Donald Trump has been a shameless self-promoter who said whatever he wanted to say, with little or no concern for the consequences. Facts and truth were of no importance, all that mattered was that he won the attention that he craved. Up until he was elected President, he never had to worry about being accountable for what he said, or something as silly as having to follow through on his rhetoric.
The problem Trump now faces is that the cat may be out of the bag, and his supporters may be coming to realize they have been had. Coulter's piece excoriates Trump as a "vulgar publicity hound" whose supporters only tolerate him because he promised to deliver on the issues they care about. "In a country of 320 million people, I’m sure there are some, but I have yet to meet a person who said, 'Yeah, I don’t really care about immigration or trade, I just love his personality!'"
There was a time when Trump believed there was nothing he could do that would lead his followers to turn on him. Now, however, the script has been flipped. Now, he is scared of them, and what will happen to him if he doesn't deliver a wall that he always thought was just a slogan he rolled out to amp up his crowds. Now, as Coulter warned, "he must know that if he doesn’t build the wall, he has zero chance of being re-elected and a 100 percent chance of being utterly humiliated."
His arguments for the wall may all be predicated on lies, but for Trump there is no turning back; he is committed to – as Slim Charles would say – fighting on those lies, even if it means declaring a national emergency and fighting it out in court as he tries to save face with his base. He has been warned that he has to deliver, and he is clearly heeding the warning, as there are few things he fears more than humiliation.
Perhaps Democrats will offer him a way out. They could offer him his $5.7 billion in exchange for their long-sought DACA fix. After all, they offered him $25 billion in wall funding for a DACA fix last year, only to have him turn it down at the last minute. That could be a win-win: He gets his money – a pittance in the scheme of things – while they get DACA for twenty-five cents on the dollar.
But Democrats are dug in as well, and they may be unwilling to give Trump a win at any price. In that case, he will have no choice but to go down fighting on his lies. At that point, the calculus facing Mitch McConnell and Republican Senators will come into play. In the wake of the thrashing the GOP took in the mid-term elections, and faced with a visibly weakened President, those Senators will have to decide how much longer they are going to be willing to march in lockstep behind Donald Trump, accepting that his fights are their fights and that his lies are their lies.
Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit! To Save Our Democracy, It’s Time to Let Alabama Be Alabama and Set California Free."
Artwork by Joe Dworetzky. Check out Joe's political cartooning at www.jayduret.com. Follow him on Twitter @jayduret or Instagram at @joefaces.
– Slim Charles, The Wire
Many years ago, I asked a client of mine – the manager of a regional airport along the Florida coast – about his strikingly elegant, gold cigarette lighter. "It is a perk of the job," he replied. "From time to time, when I arrive at work in the morning, I will find that drug smugglers will have abandoned a small plane on the tarmac. One time, they left this lighter behind, sitting on the wing."
Our southern border may be a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, as Donald Trump suggested in his Oval Office speech this week, but according to reports by the Drug Enforcement Administration, only a tiny share of those drugs are carried by individuals through the holes in existing border walls and fences that Trump proposes to replace with his bigger wall. Instead – if the DEA reports are to be believed – the lion's share of illegal drugs make their way into the country through a variety of other means, including cars and tractor trailer rigs through legal ports of entry, fishing boats, private aircraft (like the one my client described on the tarmac in Fort Myers), tunnels that go from Mexico to safe-houses on the U.S. side of the border, and delivered door-to-door by U.S. Postal Service Priority Mail.
It probably goes without saying at this point that Donald Trump's Wall is not about public policy. It is not about taming the $500 billion illegal drug trade that he pointed to in his speech. It is not about the 4,000 terrorists that Sarah Sanders claimed crossed the southern border, or the crimes committed by immigrants that Trump cited in his speech. Rather, the wall is simply a rallying cry. Or, to be more precise, it is an applause line. Trump said it best in an interview with the New York Times editorial board in January 2016, before a single primary vote had been cast: “You know,” he commented at the time, “if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of, maybe thinking about leaving, I can sort of tell the audience, I just say, ‘We will build The Wall!’ and they go nuts.”
Trump's speech this week was a spectacle of lies and dissembling. As DEA and DHS data suggest, there is no national security crisis at the border; to the contrary, the number of illegal crossings has declined dramatically over the past decade. It turns out that the 4,000 suspected terrorists Sanders referred to was a reference to State Department data on suspected terrorist arrivals at U.S. airports, while the number who have sought to enter the country via the southwest border turned out to be six – but not before Vice President Pence embarrassed himself by defending Sanders' claim on TV. Trump's penchant for pumping up crowds with stories about immigrant crime ignores the fact that native-born Americans commit crimes at a greater rate than those who arrive at our shores. And if Trump's objective, as he suggested in his speech, is to crack down on fentanyl and opioids flooding into the country – which should be his concern as those drugs are disproportionately impacting the lives and livelihoods of his base voters – he might better direct his rhetorical outrage at prescription drug regulation, the U.S. Postal Service that delivers drugs illegally purchased on the Internet, and Chinese President Xi Jingping, whose country is the major source of fentanyl production.
Donald Trump, as has long been evident, seems to love to lie. Ted Cruz made the argument that it was a pathological condition most eloquently during the Republican primaries, a view widely shared by Republicans before they did an about face and threw their lot in with him. Last month, Ann Coulter – one of Trump's most ardent supporters among the right wing commentariat – jumped on board. It was her piece in Breitbart entitled Gutless President in Wall-less Country that helped push Trump to walk away from a budget agreement he had said he would support and instead to head down the path that led to the government shutdown, and ultimately to the Oval Office speech. In her piece, Coulter excoriated Trump as a narcissist and sociopath who lied to his core supporters, claiming that he either "never intended to build the wall and was scamming voters all along, or he has no idea how to get it done and zero interest in finding out."
The correct answer is that Trump was scamming his voters all along. He ranted about the Wall for the simple reason that – as he told the New York Times editorial board – it worked. Just like Birtherism worked and his attacks against the Central Park Five worked. For his entire career in public life, Donald Trump has been a shameless self-promoter who said whatever he wanted to say, with little or no concern for the consequences. Facts and truth were of no importance, all that mattered was that he won the attention that he craved. Up until he was elected President, he never had to worry about being accountable for what he said, or something as silly as having to follow through on his rhetoric.
The problem Trump now faces is that the cat may be out of the bag, and his supporters may be coming to realize they have been had. Coulter's piece excoriates Trump as a "vulgar publicity hound" whose supporters only tolerate him because he promised to deliver on the issues they care about. "In a country of 320 million people, I’m sure there are some, but I have yet to meet a person who said, 'Yeah, I don’t really care about immigration or trade, I just love his personality!'"
There was a time when Trump believed there was nothing he could do that would lead his followers to turn on him. Now, however, the script has been flipped. Now, he is scared of them, and what will happen to him if he doesn't deliver a wall that he always thought was just a slogan he rolled out to amp up his crowds. Now, as Coulter warned, "he must know that if he doesn’t build the wall, he has zero chance of being re-elected and a 100 percent chance of being utterly humiliated."
His arguments for the wall may all be predicated on lies, but for Trump there is no turning back; he is committed to – as Slim Charles would say – fighting on those lies, even if it means declaring a national emergency and fighting it out in court as he tries to save face with his base. He has been warned that he has to deliver, and he is clearly heeding the warning, as there are few things he fears more than humiliation.
Perhaps Democrats will offer him a way out. They could offer him his $5.7 billion in exchange for their long-sought DACA fix. After all, they offered him $25 billion in wall funding for a DACA fix last year, only to have him turn it down at the last minute. That could be a win-win: He gets his money – a pittance in the scheme of things – while they get DACA for twenty-five cents on the dollar.
But Democrats are dug in as well, and they may be unwilling to give Trump a win at any price. In that case, he will have no choice but to go down fighting on his lies. At that point, the calculus facing Mitch McConnell and Republican Senators will come into play. In the wake of the thrashing the GOP took in the mid-term elections, and faced with a visibly weakened President, those Senators will have to decide how much longer they are going to be willing to march in lockstep behind Donald Trump, accepting that his fights are their fights and that his lies are their lies.
Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit! To Save Our Democracy, It’s Time to Let Alabama Be Alabama and Set California Free."
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