Donald Trump visits Mexico border wall to kickstart 2020 campaign

Donald Trump has returned to brass tacks campaigning with a visit to the incomplete Mexico border wall he pledged to build in 2016.

President Donald Trump tries to project his law and order credentials at the Mexican border in San Luis, Arizona. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump has returned to brass tacks campaigning with a visit to the incomplete Mexico border wall he pledged to build in 2016 as he tries to salvage his ­campaign after the damp squib of his weekend comeback rally.

Stung by the low turnout in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the US President addressed a crowd of young conservatives at a smaller venue in Arizona, a state he won by 3.5 points but where Joe Biden, his presumptive Democrat rival in November, has a four-point lead in the polls.

Mr Trump, 74, wants to put the coronavirus crisis behind him and rebuild the booming economy it interrupted, but he arrived as the Republican-controlled state had its highest daily total of confirmed cases and hospitalisations.

The visit was intended to ­emphasise his “law and order” credentials and show he was keeping his promise to limit immigration, a core 2016 campaign theme, by marking the completion of 320km of steel wall. Almost all of this has been built on the site of previous, less secure barriers.

Progress has been limited by a funding battle with congress, which Mr Trump lost early last year, leading him to requisition cash mainly from the military budget. He had campaigned on a vow to make Mexico pay for the construction but Mexico refused.

As he left the White House Mr Trump underlined his law-and-order image with a pledge to issue an executive order to ensure “long-term sentences” for “vandals and hoodlums” who tried to pull down a statue of former president ­Andrew Jackson in a square outside the White House this week.

Mr Trump torpedoed attempts by the White House to play down a comment he made during his Tulsa rally speech on Saturday night that he had ordered officials to “slow the testing down please” for coronavirus because it was finding too many cases.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Monday this was meant “in jest” and blamed the media for failing to report that more testing meant more cases would be uncovered. Asked on Wednesday if he had been kidding, Mr Trump said: “I don’t kid. Let me just tell you, let me make it clear: We have got the greatest testing program anywhere in the world. We test better than anybody in the world. Our tests are the best in the world, and we have the most of them.”

His speech at a mega-church in Phoenix, Arizona, clashed with an online fundraiser for Mr Biden, with Barack Obama appearing with his former vice-president for the first time since Mr Biden ­announced his candidacy last year.

More than 120,000 grassroots supporters paid more than $US4m ($5.7m) to watch the event, the campaign said.

Mr Trump also remains locked in a war of words with his former ­national security adviser, John ­Bolton, over a book published on Tuesday that accused the President of being ­incompetent and susceptible to flattery by authoritarian world leaders including those of China, Russia and North Korea.

“Washed up Creepster John Bolton is a lowlife who should be in jail, money seized, for disseminating, for profit, highly Classified information,” Mr Trump tweeted.

Making matters worse is the attempt by Trump family lawyers to suppress a tell-all book by the President’s ­niece, which is expected to be published next week.

In court papers, lawyers for Mr Trump’s brother Robert argue that Mary Trump and others had signed a settlement agreement in the late 1990s that included a confidentiality clause explicitly saying they would not “publish any ­account concerning … litigation or their relationship”, unless they all agreed.

A description of the book — ­titled Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man — says it describes “a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of ­neglect and abuse”.

The Times, AP