“Shut down this country”
In the realm of you cannot make this up, the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, in a speech in Michigan Saturday night told the sparsely-attended rally that he will shut down the government if he doesn’t get his wall funding. In other words, he intends to cause the nation not to function or close it down because the border will not be shut down.
In one of his many screeds, he stated: “We have to have borders and we have to have them fast and we need security, we need the wall. That wall has started. We got $1.6 billion. We come up again on Sept. 28 and if we don’t get border security, we’ll have no choice. We’ll close down the country. Because we need border security.” One wonders if Trump realizes that when you shut the government down, non-essential functions come to a standstill. Things like the border wall go on hiatus and it theoretically would make the border more porous (although the number of border crossers has decreased significantly in the last few years).
Trump also appears to have forgotten about his promises of who was going to pay for this wall. On the campaign trail and in the early days of his presidency, he repeatedly promised that Mexico was going to pay for the wall. He then changed that to Mexicans are going to reimburse us for the wall. As with most that Donald spins, the statements he made are proving to be lies. He knows that this wall will never be built, and that the Mexicans will not pay for the wall.
Trump added to his repertoire of hatred for immigrants by attacking Nancy Pelosi and California Governor Jerry Brown, stating: “The Democrats don’t care about our military … our borders … I don’t think they care about crime. A vote for Democrats in November is a vote for open border and crime. It’s also a vote for higher taxes.” Donald Trump did state one truth and it will hopefully come true – that if Democrats win in November (and he has not been indicted before then), they will seek to impeach him. For everything else, it was his normal “red meat” to his base.
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.