An imagined response to Trump’s interminable demand for $5.7 billion for The Wall:
“Mr. President, Sir, can you tell us how you arrived at precisely five point seven billion dollars—for this wall that keeps on changing,”
“Umm,” says Trump.
The voice continues “…from paid for by Mexico, which won’t happen, to concrete, to steel bars, to slats, one doesn’t know what you’ll offer next, yet your figure is unchanging: $5.7 billion. Please explain where and how you came up with this rather large figure…”
Trump’s face turns purple; he could be having a stroke. He shouts, “Get him outta here! National Security Risk!”
The voice laughs, the laugh amplifies, then, “You won’t find me. Nowhere, everywhere. Don’t like hearing about your own lies? Try telling the Truth.”
Maybe, in response, Trump bangs his head against a wall?
It should be noted here: Trump began by demanding a Wall, cited a figure of $5 billion, then $5.6 billion, now, has stuck with $5.7 billion, despite his changing his tune about what kind of “Wall” he’s talking about: One paid for by our neighbor, Mexico? Never going to happen, especially with AMLO in charge there. One built with concrete? Well, maybe not: too many opponents. One built with steel bars or pipes? One built with steel slats you can see through?
Where is it to be built, along the whole border? No. So, where?
Note that despite this changeability in Trump’s proposed wall, (or is it a fence?), the dollar figure has not changed.
Why? Because there was no basis for the figure in the first place. No cost estimates with any basis (how much cement, how many steel slats, what would they cost, what about the construction cost putting them along the border? None of that.
Trump really is a holdup bandit, demanding his price for allowing the Federal Government to function normally. Ir really isn’t about Wall. It’s about Trump’s obsession with winning.
That’s why Democrats are NOT to blame for the shutdown; they have offered House bills that would reopen Government, but Mitch McConnell, until today, has refused to allow the Senate to vote on the House initiative, or a Democratic-authored Senate bill.
What is also clear: Trump is NOT negotiating; he’s threatening. Democrats CANNOT compromise with someone holding the equivalent of a very big gun. “Democrats” like Tulsi Gabbard, who claim that the shutdown is partly the Democrats’ fault, are simply buying Trump’s threat, and saying in effect: surrender to the holdup; pay the (un)masked marauder.
No. If there is to be a negotiated settlement, that does require real negotiation, not posturing and threats. To give into the threat is to open Government to Presidential threats (extortion), for anything the Executive wants. That way lies dictatorship.
In the meantime, the partial shutdown of the Government is causing damage all over the nation: to Government workers not paid, to farmers not getting data or subsidies, to SNAP recipients who can’t buy their groceries, to National Parks sustaining damages from overflowing trash to illegal lumbering, and on and on.
The responsible thing to do would be to sign the bill reopening Government, and then sitting down together, to thrash out an agreement on “border security” that actually makes sense, instead of holding everyone hostage for a monument to Trump.
Yes, that’s what Wall would be: sort of like Hadrian’s Wall, or the Great Wall of China (neither of which were effective at keeping out the people targeted: Scots, Mongols) but were monuments to the putative builders.
Trump’s Wall should NOT be built. Border security should be enhanced, so Americans can be confident that arriving immigrants enter the country legally..