Back to Make America Great Again

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.”