Tag: Trump wall

The Wall Is Not Popular. (And Neither Is Trump.)

By The New York Times | Source: Fox News Voter Analysis. No FNVA survey was conducted in Alaska, Louisiana, North Carolina or Kentucky.

The border wall remains popular only with the president’s base, and shutting down the government over the issue seems unlikely to win new fans.

By insisting on a border wall, President Trump is emphasizing an issue that may be popular with his base but seems unlikely to attract new supporters.

There has been little polling since the government shutdown began last month, but what there is indicates that voters oppose a border wall, blame the president for the shutdown, believe the shutdown will have adverse consequences and don’t believe the government should be shut down over the wall.

The wall has consistently been unpopular, with voters opposed by around a 20-point margin over months of national surveys. That makes it even less popular than the president himself.

View the complete January 12 article by Nate Cohn on The New York Times website here.

Trump claims he never said Mexico would cut a check for the wall. Let’s go to the tape.

Back in April 2015 — an era so distant in American history that it barely shimmers in and out of view, cloaked in the haze of everything that’s happened since — Donald John Trump promised the United States that he would build a wall on the border with Mexico and that Mexico would cover the cost.

It was at an event in New Hampshire covered by Paul Steinhauser of NH1 News, targeting the state which, as it turns out, would provide Trump with his first victory in electoral politics. But at the time — despite Steinhauser’s accurate assessment that it wasn’t — it seemed like a joke. The TV guy was going to build a wall for free, huh? Okay. Good luck.

The point, though, is that Trump’s insistence that Mexico would pay for the wall is, in fact, older than his campaign itself. At that New Hampshire event, he even said how it would happen, in broad strokes.

View the complete January 10 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

On the Border, Little Enthusiasm for a Wall: ‘We Have Other Problems That Need Fixing’ The Borderland Cafe in Columbus, N.M., on Tuesday. Credit Caitlin O’Hara for The New York Times Image

The Borderland Cafe in Columbus, N.M., on Tuesday. Credit: Caitlin O’Hara, The New York Times

COLUMBUS, N.M. — Just minutes from the border in rural New Mexico, the Borderland Cafe in the village of Columbus serves burritos and pizza to local residents, Border Patrol agents and visitors from other parts of the country seeking a glimpse of life on the frontier. The motto painted on the wall proclaims “Life is good in the Borderland.”

“This is the sleepiest little town you could think of,” said Adriana Zizumbo, 31, who was raised in Columbus and owns the cafe with her husband. “The only crisis we’re facing here is a shortage of labor. Fewer people cross the border to work than before, and Americans don’t want to get their hands dirty doing hard work.”

President Trump has shut down part of the government over border security and his plan to build a wall along the border with Mexico, and in a prime-time speech on Tuesday night he painted a bleak picture of life in towns like Columbus.

View the complete January 8 article by Simon Romero, Manny Fernandez, Jose A. Del Real and Azam Ahmed on The New York Times website here.

Former Trump aide: The wall was never supposed to be a literal thing

Credit: Evan Vuccil, AP Photo

Trump took a symbol of racism and made it the center of his presidency — because he liked the attention it got him at rallies.

Trump’s obsession with the border wall has now caused a government shutdown, but it was originally introduced to him by aides as a way to keep his campaign speeches under control.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s advisors struggled to figure out how to get Trump, who hates to prepare for things, to focus on the issue of immigration during campaign speeches.

“How do we get him to continue to talk about immigration?” Sam Nunberg, one of Mr. Trump’s early political advisers, recalled asking Roger J. Stone Jr., another adviser, according to the New York Times. “We’re going to get him to talk about how he’s going to build a wall.”

View the complete January 7 article by Dan Desai Martin on the ShareBlue.com website here.

Unpopular Trump pushes unpopular wall as federal employees, services suffer

People are streaming into national parks to find trash cans overflowing and restrooms locked. Volunteers are stepping in to stop conditions from deteriorating. (Luis Velarde , Juca Favela/The Washington Post)

But for Democrats, is the shutdown worth the funding Trump wants?

This is where we are under Donald Trump.

Unpopular, and unpopularly elected, the president has proudly forced the partial government shutdown in pursuit of an unpopular border wall he promised Mexico would fund.

Irresponsible. Reckless. Disgraceful.

View the complete January 4 article by Joe Davidson on The Washington Post website here.

House Democrats pass government funding bills, Pelosi jokes she’d give Trump $1 for a wall

Speaker Pelosi, D-CA., pictured greeting Senate Minority Leader Schumer, D-NY, during opening day proceedings of the 116th Congress Jan. 3, said Democrats will not agree to a border wall but joked she’d give President Donald Trump $1 for it. Credit: Tom Williams, CQ Roll Call

More seriously, Pelosi reiterates Democrats will not agree to wall as Republicans predict long shutdown

The new House Democratic majority passed two government funding bills Thursday to open shuttered federal agencies that President Donald Trump has said he will not sign, as Republicans predicted the partial government shutdown will be a long one.

Before the votes Speaker Nancy Pelosi reiterated that Democrats will not agree to a border wall but joked that she’d give Trump $1 for it.

“A dollar?” the California Democrat said when asked if there was any situation in which she’d even accept $1 for the wall. “A dollar. One dollar, yeah, one dollar.”

View the complete January 3 article by Lindsey McPherson on The Roll Call website here.

The lies Trump is using to justify his border wall shutdown

Credit: Evan Vuccil, AP Photo

Separating fact from fiction.

President Donald Trump rejected compromises from both Democrats and Republicans to re-open the federal government ahead of a border security briefing with Congressional leaders on Wednesday.

Democrats have offered $2.5 billion in border security funding, but because it is half of Trump’s $5 billion demand, it was not accepted. A compromise from some Senate Republicans, which would have given Trump his border wall money while also providing protections to young undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, also failed to pass the Trump test.

Faced with a federal government shutdown entering into its 12th day, Trump maintained his hardline stance on immigration and request for $5 billion in border wall funding. By deploying fear-mongering tactics and lies about immigration, the president is attempting to gin up his Republican base while simultaneously trying to convince Democrats of the wall’s necessity.

View the complete January 2 article by Rebekah Entralgo website on the ThinkProgress website here.

Editorial Boards Call for an End to the Trump Shutdown

Editorial boards across the country have spoken: Donald Trump is responsible for this disastrous government shutdown and are demanding he finally take some responsibility and work with congressional Democrats. See below:

MassLive: “Trump made this problem. The outgoing Congress was well on the way toward passing a spending plan to keep the government fully functioning — until the president, bowing to pressure from the right-wing rabble-rousers, the radio talk show bloviators, refused to go along with the plan.”

The Press Democrat: “President Donald Trump is responsible for the shutdown. The author of the ‘The Art of the Deal’ is insisting on $5 billion for a wall along the southern border and, so far, has refused to negotiate. He couldn’t get the money when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. And, as of Thursday, the Democrats are the majority party in the House of Representatives.” Continue reading “Editorial Boards Call for an End to the Trump Shutdown”

Based on Trump’s detailed diagram of his slat wall, here is some advanced mathematics

For probably the first time in American history, part of the government is shut down for lack of funding because of a dispute over a construction project.

President Trump, as you may have heard, promised during the 2016 presidential campaign that he would solve most of America’s immigration problems and many of its other issues by building a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico. This wall was going to be paid for by Mexico, he claimed, an assertion that was never believable. More believable: that the wall was going to be made of concrete slabs, a point he made in some detail on the trail.

“Concrete plank,” he said at a rally in August 2016. “Precast. Precast, right? Boom. Bing. Done. Keep going.”

View the complete December 23 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.