#TrumpIsTheNationalEmergency
Autocratic decrees are the hope of an incompetent leader who would hope for some mass catastrophe to declare martial law. It’s what happens when the federal lock-out hostages can’t be killed.
This was the hope of the 2018 election stunt of sending US troops to “stop” migrant caravans, as if a wall would do an equivalent job. There was no emergency or crisis at the border then and there is none now, the data shows this, and yet the fiction persists, propped up as a non-existent crime wave that has been in consistent decline. If the approximately 10,000 MS-13 members were a national “clear and present danger”, they’d already have been dealt with “extreme prejudice”.
A national emergency declaration is the only way Trump can move action toward an election sales gimmick like the wall, because it props up the hatred of his political base of griftable rubes. And it’ll be even better if there’s political chaos in Latin America and a new population of potential refugees for the Trumpian base to fear.
He imagines that the federal budget will somehow pay for his wall, not unlike how the Trump Foundation paid for his portraits.
He’s deploying any stunt or spectacle to divert your attention from the ongoing prosecution of the criminal incompetence of the Trump regime, some of which is about #TrumpRussia. But as these crises occur now regularly, it is simply about dereliction of Constitutional duty.
There still could be a “wag the dog” precipitating event requiring actual large-scale military intervention, but it is more likely to occur during the 2020 election campaign in order to rally support for Trump and demonstrate that he can use his commander-in-chief bonespurs on the steed-of-state.
Then again, he’s stupid enough to try to cancel the 2020 election — Vlad will be pleased.
“On the bright side, if Trump uses emergency powers to declare a national emergency & fund his wall, it means we get near-instant Universal Healthcare next time a Dem is in power.”