To all you avid Trump supporters out there, sorry to tell you this, but you fell for one of the dumbest proposals in American political history, and you took it hook, line, and sinker.
President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has begun discussing with Republicans plans to fund the wall through Congressional appropriations. Trump, taking to his favorite form of 140-character communication, insisted that though US tax dollars would fund the "Great Wall" and build it, all that funding "will be paid back by Mexico later!" Trump has been running on the promise of an immense "wall" along the United States' southern border since early in his campaign.
The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017
Trump said in a phone interview with the New York Times, "We’re going to get reimbursed. But I don’t want to wait that long. But you start, and then you get reimbursed."
So here's the deal: President-elect Trump is going to make a gamble with tax dollars paid by each and every one of us, use them to build a giant lawn ornament with no function other than symbolism, and then hope that he can get some of those dollars back by extorting the Mexican government. Trump has given no specific plans on how exactly he's going to get Mexico to pay American taxpayers back for his wall. Trump played a fiddle, and his supporters danced right along to it without even thinking.
The commentators at Breitbart, who have licked Trump's boots since the beginning of the campaign, dodge the question of funding the wall and instead point fingers at liberals who supposedly love nothing better than any and all tax dollars. Breitbart's John Hayward writes, "It’s a bit rich to see the media that staunchly defended Barack Obama doubling the U.S. national debt in a single presidency — the media that thinks quibbles about deficit spending only come from heartless grinches looking for an excuse to defund social programs so they can enjoy watching poor people die — suddenly become deeply concerned about Trump launching the border wall project before the last shrink-wrapped pallet of cash has been delivered to the White House by the government of Mexico."
Yeah, here's the thing though, pal. There's a big difference between government spending on useful things - infrastructure, defense, healthcare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid - and spending them on a useless show of a single man's hubris. Now, don't get me wrong, I want to begin cutting costs and shrinking the debt. Trimming fat is absolutely necessary. Unnecessary expenditures need to be rejected - which is precisely why I reject this foolish wall. The Government Accountability Office calculates that regular pedestrian fencing - which we already have on much of our border - costs on average $5.1 million per mile. That's not enough for Trump, who wants some giant wall made of poured concrete across the entire border to replace the fencing we already have. Yeah, I'd rather not.
Besides the cost, let's talk about how this wouldn't even solve the problem of illegal immigration. Research from the Journal on Migration and Human Security finds that not only are most illegal immigrants not even coming from Mexico, but also that most of them illegally enter by overstaying legally-acquired visas. Boost border patrol personnel, close legal loopholes, do something that actually helps fix the problems. But nah, that's not fun and sexy, let's do something big and loud that won't actually do anything.
Donald Trump apparently never learned a little lesson that I learned back in fifth grade. I ran for class president, and when the candidates were giving speeches saying why the class should elect them president, I announced that I would make sure there would be less homework and longer recess. But then my teacher looked up at me on the stage and said, "That's really nice, Brandon, but how exactly are you going to do that?" The whole class went silent and looked at me for a response while I turned red and slowly went back to my seat. That's when I got smacked in the face and realized that you can't promise people great and fantastic things if you can't actually come up with a practical way to do those things.
Apparently, all those people who were chanting, "BUILD THAT WALL, BUILD THAT WALL," never learned that lesson either. I don't claim to have all the answers, folks. I'm just an average guy who cares about his country. But I'm pretty confident in saying that anyone who thinks Trump's wall is a good idea doesn't appear to have a whole lot of sense. Of course, someone will probably read this, get pissed, and reply, "Yeah, well, Hillary was gonna..." Nope. That's not gonna work anymore. People voted for Trump. It's done and over and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The man is in office now. If people are going to defend him, they can't do it by comparing him to other candidates now. Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein don't matter anymore. Now people have to defend Trump strictly by virtue of what he is proposing. This is real life, folks. If people are going to defend Trump and his hare-brained ideas that they're sending with him to the White House, they're going to have to defend him against the backdrop of reality. Sadly for Trump's long-time supporters, reality isn't exactly Donald's strong suit.
