Forget the wall. Trump is the national security crisis

Sarah Kendzior is the author of The View From Flyover Country and the co-host of the podcast Gaslit Nation.

On December 22, 2018, the second-longest shutdown of the federal government in United States history began. On December 23, the body of Jakelin Caal Maquin was returned to Guatemala; she was a seven-year-old who died in a Texas border camp. On December 24, another child from Guatemala, eight-year-old Felipe Gómez Alonzo, died after seven days in U.S. border patrol custody. That day, the President tweeted, “I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to make a deal on desperately needed border security. At some point the Democrats not wanting to make a deal will cost our Country more money than the Border Wall we are all talking about. Crazy!”

Poor me, he says, as the deaths mount and the country collapses. Poor me, Mr. Trump similarly implored in his address to the nation Tuesday night: it was an eight-minute teleprompter speech filled with lies about the danger of Central American migrants and threats to let a national security crisis he created continue unless Democrats bow to his ever-changing will.

The speech was akin to a hostage video, and American viewers were his captive audience. We watched because the stakes felt too high to turn away. We watched because Mr. Trump has taunted us with talk of declaring a “national emergency” – an act which gives him the power to do things like kill the internet, freeze bank accounts, and turn military troops into a domestic police force. We watched because Mr. Trump has long applauded death through his praise of dictators and criminals. We watched because the path to American autocracy was laid out upon his election, and we wanted to know which victims were next.

That is the sick and slick vendetta of America’s reality-TV President.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-forget-the-wall-trump-is-the-national-security-crisis