Thoughts about Trump's speech

NPR has the transcript; googling “NPR Trump speech transcript” will take you right there.

Trump’s thesis is, “the Border is completely unsecured, so hard drugs and illegal immigrants are flocking across it and it’s all the Democrats’ fault.”

Throw in a lot of jerking on your heartstrings with a bulldozer, and that’s Trump’s speech in a nutshell.

At one point Trump fell back on the old “what about if it was your daughter” strawman. Problem is, for seventeen people in Parkland, Florida, it WAS their son, daughter or husband and Trump didn’t do a damn thing.

Let’s dissect Trump’s thesis, shall we?

POINT 1: The Border is completely undefended.
REALITY: Of all the international borders in the world, the only ones that are more heavily defended than the one in question have land mines. In fact, there’s already a wall there everywhere a wall can be built. Certainly we can tear down the old wall and build a new one, but how that’s supposed to do anything besides funnel tax dollars to Trump’s contributors is a question best not asked two hours before I normally wake up.

POINT 2: All the bad things we don’t want in this country won’t come in if we have a wall.
REALITY: Criminals are creative. If Trump manages to create a barrier so sturdy not one seed can possibly get through, they’re not going to scream, in a bad Middle Eastern accent, “no drugs for you!” They’ll find other paths, like loading the drugs into sacks of coffee beans or flying them through San Juan, Puerto Rico. And since those routes are already well established...

POINT 3: It’s all the Democrats’ fault.
REALITY: Trump believes our party wants “open borders,” or at least he claims to. The mass of legislation signed and sponsored by Democrats to secure that border puts that theory in question. If Trump would have come in and said, “I want more officers, better sensors, a better border law, maybe some more detention facilities to hold border crossers while waiting for deportation,” there’s a good chance we would have worked with him. “I want to replace a wall that’s not working with a bigger one that won’t work and pay for it with savings on illegal migration” - especially since “this expensive thing will pay for itself” seems to be the GOP’s theme music - isn’t going to garner much interest.

Two other points that have already been discussed ad nauseum: if Congress wanted to give him a wall they would have done it when the whole body was under Republican control, and Trump has no credibility in this matter because we keep finding illegals on his payroll.