Donald Trump’s wall may have been a memory trick
Donald Trump’s stirring promise, PolitiFact, June 15, 2015:
I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall.
Walled in by fantasy? John Harwood, CNBC, a US pay-TV business news channel, Friday:
Donald Trump sought the presidency on a fantasy: with Mexico’s money, he would build a “great wall” of concrete and steel across America’s southern border. Ever since he won, Trump has obscured his inability to make the fantasy real. Rhetorically, he has fogged the air on whether he seeks a wall or something else, whether he needs money from congress or not, whether the wall is “desperately needed” or already largely built.
MarketWatch, Friday:
Trump remained adamant about a wall, saying such a barrier is needed to stop ... immigrant smugglers, and to halt the flow of drugs and crime into the US. He acknowledged he’d told the Democrats a shutdown could last months or years, but added he didn’t want it to. Separately, Trump wrote to members of congress: “Walls work. That’s why rich, powerful, and successful people build them around their homes. All Americans deserve the same protection.”
Trump was asked how he was going to build a 3000km wall, August 2015:
Very easy. I’m a builder. That’s easy. I build buildings that are — can I tell you what’s more complicated? What’s more complicated is building a building that’s 95 storeys tall. OK?
In a presidential debate, Trump set out his rationale, December 2015:
As far as the wall is concerned, we’re going to build a wall. We’re going to create a border. We’re going to let people in, but they’re going to come in legally ... And it’s something that can be done, and I get questioned about that. They built the Great Wall of China. That’s 13,000 miles (20,900km). Here, we actually need 1000 (miles) because we have natural barriers.
The Guardian, yesterday:
Saturday was day 15 of a partial government shutdown that Donald Trump said could go on for months or years, if he is not given funding for a wall on the Mexican border. As new talks were held without result, potentially devastating effects of the standoff were coming into focus ... Democrats ... have passed bills to fund the government but flatly refused to provide the $5.6 billion for the wall, which Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called “immoral” and which most experts believe would be ineffective. Polling shows opposition to Trump on the wall and immigration in general. But the president is also playing to his political base. Asked about a claim made by (minority leader Chuck) Schumer on Friday that the White House was ready to continue the shutdown indefinitely, Trump said: “Absolutely I said that.”
Perhaps it was a trick. Stuart Anderson, Forbes, Friday:
Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall along the US-Mexico border did not come from security analysts following years of study or through evidence that a wall would reduce illegal immigration. Amazingly, for something so central to the US president, the wall came about as a “mnemonic device” thought up by a pair of political consultants to remind Donald Trump to talk about illegal immigration ... His advisers brainstormed methods for keeping their attention-addled boss on message ... They needed a trick, a mnemonic device.