All in all, it's just another post on the wall

[robkelk]

CBC Analysis: Texas photo op or not, Trump has walled himself in - with maybe only one way out of this shutdown

Like Litman, Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio doesn't see a lot of face-saving ways out of this bind.

If the president begins to hear from congressional Republicans whose constituents are hurting in states that Trump won in 2016, that will put pressure on him to bend, said D'Antonio, author of The Truth about Trump.

"Right now, he's looking for a way out. And it's probably going to be this idea of declaring an emergency."

Even if the courts strike that move down, he said, Trump will be able to claim a moral victory.

And if it results in a blight on his presidential record?

"Look at this presidency as if it's the presidency of a clever child," said D'Antonio. "A clever child is not going to be thinking about history's judgment, but whether he's going to get in trouble in this moment."

Trump, he said, will "have the courts to blame," and likely won't think much about legacy.

As for the government shutdown, it's approaching Day 22 on Saturday - a milestone that D'Antonio believes the president will use to sell the idea of himself as a "valiant warrior."

"This will be the way Trump says to his base: 'I did everything. Not only did I have the longest shutdown in history, I did all these other things,'" he said. "He wants everything to be the biggest, longest, tallest, greatest - and once I heard the record was 21 days, I immediately thought, 'He's going to go for 22.'"

"Building the wall was the single most-often repeated promise of the campaign, and he's staking the shutdown on it. He's making it very important to people who believe that they voted for it," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who studies presidential rhetoric at the University of Pennsylvania.

Trump's Texas visit did successfully displace news about the Trump-Russia investigation, as well as former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's agreement to testify before Congress next month, she said.

So... It looks like there's going to be a state of emergency, all because the person whose name is on the cover of The Art of the Deal refuses to deal.


As for popular opinion on this wall:

The Hill: Poll: Majorities oppose Trump's wall funding demand, call for compromise

The survey found that 56 percent of respondents do not support the president's proposal to construct a wall along the southern border, compared to 44 percent who do.

Erecting a broad security barrier along the border is only slightly more popular, according to the poll. Only 46 percent of respondents support that proposal, while 54 percent oppose it.

A majority of U.S. voters surveyed, 58 percent, said Trump should withdraw his demand for the border funding, while 42 percent said the president "should not give in."

As for effectiveness of a wall: Well, Trump compared his wall to the one keeping Palestinians out of Israel almost a year ago, so...



Palestinian men climb over the barrier dividing East Jerusalem in 2015.

Tomas Munita, for The New York Times (source)