Once again
President Trump and his supporters have denied facing the realities regarding
the recent “Build the Wall” debacle. There are four crystal clear facts
that must be acknowledged.
President
Trump insisted on numerous occasions in his bid for the presidency that,
“Mexico will pay for the wall and not one dime of taxpayer’s money will be used
to finance it.” Didn’t happen.
A second fact
has also emerged. After Trump’s T.V. declaration that he would,
“own a government shutdown,” and take “full responsibility for a shutdown,”
once the event occurred he tried to shift that ownership and responsibility to
the Democrats.
The third fact
is that before the implementation of the government shutdown, which lasted for
35 days and denied payment to over 800,000 employees, the deal presented
to our President included $1.6 billion in additional border funding. He
rejected that deal. The deal President Trump just signed includes only
$1.38 billion. He now plans to use the “declaration of a national
emergency” to get the additional funding for the $5.7 billion he initially
demanded. Guess many of those laid-off are wondering why he didn’t
do that to begin with and avoid the shutdown entirely.
The last
reality fact surrounding this issue, and the one his “build the wall“
supporters consistently try to bury is, that during the two years which
Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, none of the Republican leaders
allowed a bill to be passed giving President Trump funds to build his
wall. They had the majority in both houses to do that. My only
guess is they didn’t want the wall.
It is
interesting to note that President Trump continually brags about what a great
negotiator he is and even co-authored a best seller book entitled “The Art of
the Deal”. Maybe he just ought to stick with matters pertaining to real
estate because I see no “art of the deal” regarding this entire matter.
However, the
economy is booming even though our national debt, $21 trillion, the highest in
U.S. history, the stock market’s failure to regain the losses it suffered at
the end of 2018 wiping out the entire year’s gain, and the tax breaks for
corporations that haven’t resulted in the numerous employee raises that it
promised, but instead in stock buy backs by most companies favoring only stock
holders, are all signs that things are starting to unravel.
Perhaps
President Trump needs to focus more on how to “Make America Great Again” and
less on self-promotion. However, with this latest setback, I fear
that he will spent most of his energy on “Making Trump Great Again.”
