It turns out that Mexico isn’t willing to pay for it after all, but a promise is a promise. So he has declared a fake ‘national emergency’ to get his hands on the money he needs.
It’s fake because the days when huge numbers of illegal immigrants were trying to come in across that 3,200 km. border are long past. Fifteen years ago it was more than a million and a half people a year. It had fallen to 400,000 by the middle of Barack Obama’s first term in 2010, and has not exceeded that number since.
Half of those 400,000 people are caught while crossing, so let’s just focus on the 200,000, more or less, who currently sneak through the border far from any legal crossing point, and whom a wall might stop. Let’s imagine that it could stop them all.
The predicted cost of the wall is $23 billion, so how much would the United States be spending for each of these would-be border-crossers? Around $11,000 per person, and very, very few of those people are gang members or drug-smugglers; they are just looking for work and a better life. The United States is fully entitled to turn them all away, but this is ridiculous.
The wall is largely symbolic, but it is a very important symbol for Trump. It was one of the key promises he made to the true believers in his ‘base’, and it was striking how angry they got at him when it looked like he would be thwarted by Congress. As Ann Coulter said: “The only national emergency is that our president is an idiot.”
But the ‘national emergency’ will probably do the trick for Trump. It will face all sorts of legal challenges, but the rules for declaring national emergencies are so vague and the precedents so numerous that he will probably win in the courts in the end.
In the meantime, he will have around $8 billion to play with, mostly taken from the military and disaster-relief budgets. It’s only a third of what it would take to build a full border wall, but it will let Trump look busy and persuade the ‘base’ that he is making progress.
So there’s one promise kept, more or less. The other two that really count are his promise to “bring the jobs back” and his commitment to outlaw abortion.
He can’t bring the jobs back because they never left. The vast majority (around 85%) of American manufacturing jobs lost since the turn of the century were killed by automation, not by free trade. But the fantasy statistics about near-full employment pumped out by the government may suffice to keep his base quiet, even if jobs are strangely scarce or low-paying around where they live.
What Trump does need to deliver on is banning abortion. He cannot do that himself, of course, but he promised to appoint ‘pro-life’ justices to the Supreme Court during the 2016 election campaign. He has probably managed to create an anti-abortion majority on the Court by now (although you can never tell with judges). But there is a problem for him and the Republican Party if he delivers on that promise.
47% of white women voted for Donald Trump in 2016, but around half of them were not part of his ‘base’. They were just traditional Republicans who voted as they always did, some of them perhaps holding their noses this time.
If the Supreme Court reversed its historic 1973 Roe vs Wade decision that made abortion legal throughout the United States, a lot of these women would be very cross with Trump and the Republican Party. Given that Trump only won by a hair’s breadth in 2016, he cannot afford to lose their votes.
Therefore he definitely doesn’t need a big win on Roe vs Wade in 2019 if he wants to be re-elected in 2020. Does he know this? It’s his own future at stake here, and he’s usually very alert to developments that might threaten it.
He can’t really control what the Court might decide, but he will be hoping that they just nibble at the fringes of the issue, not reverse Roe vs Wade outright. And the Court is quite likely to do just that, because senior judges hate to overthrow decisions of long standing that enjoy wide acceptance in the society. (Two-thirds of Americans support the current law.)
Trump doesn’t care about the outcome on most issues, probably including this one. He just wants a ‘win’, and he can conjure it up out of the most unpromising material. If the judges make a few minor changes to the law, he will portray it as a triumph and drop the subject.
The real secret of dealing with Trump? Throw him a fish, and he will go away.
Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Wow, you just don't give up, do you?
Still the same ridiculous hatred, lies and fake news about Trump...
You simply cannot bear the fact that he won against the totally corrupt, criminal Hillary, who cooperated with Obama and his administration to conspire against Trump.
It apparently doesn't bother you one bit that you are lying like crazy to stoke the anti-Trump hatred!
a) It was 54% of white women who voted for Trump, not 47%
b) Trump won only marginally more white votes. He won because he won more black and Latino votes than any other Republican since Reagan.
c) Trump did not win "by a hair's breadth", he won in a LANDSLIDE! He totally trounced Hillary. He won States that no Republican had won in decades!
d) If one counts the massive voter fraud in California, Detroit, Florida etc. where fraud has been PROVEN to have taken place, Trump clearly won the - irrelevant - popular vote, too.
e.g. Stein asked for a re-count in Detroit, where Hillary won. Officials said that they could not validate about 50% of the votes!
In California, the official estimate of illegal votes is around 2 - 3 million.
But you should know that the president is NOT elected by the people, but BY THE STATES, as he is the head of the FEDERATION. So each State decides which candidate they want to support and then tell the other States what their choice is. So a federal popular vote makes no sense whatsoever!
If electoral votes were allocated proportionately to the winning party, that would actually be far worse for the Democrats, as Republicans would suddenly get a large share of electoral votes from large Democrat-dominated states where Republicans get about 35-45% of the vote, but Democrats would gain almost nothing from heavily Republican ones.
It's pretty funny that this populist project is presented by the party that continuously complains about populism...
e) "It turns out that Mexico isn’t willing to pay for it after all"
The new president of Mexico stated that if necessary, he might actually agree to pay for it, as he approves of Trump's plans to a large extent. Mexico itself feels the enormous migration pressure. You probably tried to ignore it, but the mayor of Tijuana was wearing a red "Make Mexico Great Again" cap while he was dealing with the illegal migrants from Central America who were blocked at the US border.
Either way, Mexico is already paying - via the new North American Trade Agreement Canada and Mexico signed, which imposes a greater cost on both, thus allowing the US to increase their earnings.
f) Everything you say about jobs is WRONG!
There was a MASSIVE increase in manufacturing jobs - more than 600'000 jobs representing a NET GAIN, in a complete reversal of the trend under Obama, who called this "impossible".
Those are all well paying jobs, too!
Under Trump, so far, more than 5.3 MILLION jobs were created and tax revenue substantially INCREASED - despite or rather thanks to the tax cuts!
Unemployment has never been so low for women, Jews, blacks and Hispanics in the history of the US!
And contrary to your claim, they are NOT "badly paying ones".
That would be ridiculous, given that the economy NEEDS MASSIVELY MORE WORKERS, hence pushing enormous pressure on employers to raise their salaries and offer better conditions.
The demand for labor has become so extreme that handicapped people are now being offered jobs in large numbers!
So why don't you check the FACTS and present them, objectively, as your readers probably expect?
Trump doesn't care about the outcome? That's ridiculous - he obviously cares a lot more than you!
He cared so much that he gave up his extremely comfortable life as a billionaire and accepted that he would be hated and viciously attacked and even that he would LOSE MONEY - so far, because of his political involvement and the fact that he cannot manage his business ventures, he lost over $1 billion, but he keeps donating 100% of his presidential salary!
His latest State of the Union address was extremely well received - 76% approved, including 82% of all independent viewers! Even 30% of Democrats liked it.
The #WalkAway movement already enlists MILLIONS of Democrats who left the party forever. Young Black Leaders is a pro-Trump movement, as is Young Latino Leaders - both are very popular. Just watch how Trump received them at the White House.
The way you lie to your readers will only lead to one result - their complete surprise when Trump will win the re-election.
By Pro Libertate from Other on 26 Feb 2019, 23:47