ANN COULTER EXPOSES TRUMP’S “WALL” HOAX
In fact, Trump is steadily moving in the precise opposite
direction of what he promised.
Illegal immigration is on track to hit the highest levels in
more than a decade, and Trump has willfully decided to keep amnesty advocates
Jared, Ivanka, Mick Mulvaney, Marc Short, and Mercedes Schlapp in the White
House. For all his talk about immigration, did he ever consider hiring people
who share his MAGA vision?
Video shows climbers surmounting border wall
Trump claimed 'impossible to climb'
A popular video clip shows two climbers
using a ladder and rope to successfully cross a border wall President Trump
claimed was "impossible to climb."
In a visit to the southern border in
September, Trump claimed that portions of newly built wall along the
U.S.-Mexico border near Tijuana were reinforced and even "championship
mountain climbers" were unable to cross them. A video posted by
photojournalist J. Omar Ornelas, however, shows two individuals using a ladder
and other tools to cross the border successfully.
The president also noted the recent throttle in immigration numbers and
credited the newly built wall. "People aren't even coming up," Trump
said. "You see the numbers are going way down, and we're not doing a catch
and release anymore."
The video of the climbers was widely
shared as critics of Trump's border wall policy championed the effort of the
migrant climbers to disprove the president's claim. Several hundred miles of
border wall are currently under construction at the southern border,
though no new fencing has been completed since Trump took office.
While the "impossible to
climb" claim was disproven, the Department of Homeland Security claims the
wall's efficacy cannot be understated. "When it comes to stopping drugs
and illegal aliens from crossing our borders, border walls have proven to be
extremely effective," a statement said. "Border security relies on a combination
of border infrastructure, technology, personnel and partnerships with law
enforcement at the state, local, tribal, and federal level. For example, when
we installed a border wall in the Yuma Sector, we have seen border
apprehensions decrease by 90 percent."
THE
NEW YORK TIMES IS MEX OWNED AND SUBSTANTIALLY NOTHING BUT A MOUTHPIECE FOR LA
RAZA 'The Race'
Jared Kushner Fails Up, Again
Having solved the Middle East, the president’s son-in-law tackles the
border wall.
Opinion Columnist
Ivanka
Trump and Jared Kushner, who, reports say, has been given the job of overseeing
construction of a wall between Mexico and the United States.Credit...Anna
Moneymaker/The New York Times
Jared
Kushner just got a promotion. Another one. At
least I think we can call it that, and it’s a deliciously perfect assignment.
The pallid princeling is now responsible for speeding construction of the
border wall. In other words, a make-believe fixer will oversee a fairy-tale
fix.
Josh
Dawsey and Nick Miroff of The Washington Post broke the news, and when I read it, I realized that I
hadn’t heard much about Jared — or, for that matter, Ivanka — in a good long
while. They’re front and center when the administration is announcing some
ostensibly sensible initiative or claiming a pittance of progress. But when its
corruption is being exposed and the drizzle of subpoenas becomes a downpour,
they vanish, cuddling for warmth under the gilded umbrella of their
hallucinatory virtue.
We can
pretty much chart the weather of the administration by the relative visibility
of Donald Jr., so loud and hirsute, and Jared, so smooth-cheeked and mute.
Donald Jr. thrives when it’s nastiest, stomping gleefully through the muck.
Jared comes out only if his suit won’t get dirty or his hair wet.
During the impeachment inquiry, we’ve seen a lot
of Donald Jr. That’s partly because he has been hawking his new book, copies of
which the Republican National Committee spent nearly $100,000 on. But it’s also because he’s such
a ready, eager conduit for his father’s wrath, with a talent for exaggeration
and misdirection that’s clearly chromosomal.
Jared and Ivanka have been strategically scarce,
though Ivanka did flutter into view, in a fashion, when President Trump boasted two weeks ago that she had created 14
million jobs since the inauguration. “Fourteen million and going up!” he
clarified, lest anyone get the misimpression that she thought her work was
done. Never! On behalf of the American people, Ivanka is tireless. There’s no
rest for the weary, and there’s even less of it for those who live at the
crossroads of self-infatuation and delusion.
In an interview last month on Fox Business, Ivanka said
that she and Dad were “fighting every day for the American worker” and that she
was determined to “drive hard every single day to make an impact.”
“Your
time and service — our time here — is finite,” she mused, and while I’d love to
believe that she was prophesying her and her father’s imminent eviction from
the White House, I think she was referring, in her deeply spiritual way, to the span of a human life.
“It’s sand through an hourglass.” As Ivanka serves us, she never forgets the
sand.
Democrats believe that the Trump administration’s
void of ethics will sour American voters on the president. But those voters are
likelier to abandon him for the administration’s vacuum of competence — for his
nonsensical managerial style, captured in his magical thinking about Jared.
He tasked
Jared with reinventing the federal government. Unless constant rash firings,
unfilled jobs and shakedowns of foreign governments constitute reinvention, this
remains on Jared’s infinite to-do list. The president put Jared in
charge of brokering a durable peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Insert
punch line here. He followed Jared’s counsel that faith be placed in Saudi Arabia and its crown
prince, Mohammed bin Salman. We know how that worked out.
The
president somehow looked at that track record and decided that the dynamo he
should entrust with his central campaign
promise — a secure barrier between the United States and Mexico — was … Jared!
And so we have the trillionth gorgeous example of his investment in fiction.
Nearly
three years into Trump’s presidency, the border wall barely exists. Subtract
the upgrading of fencing and such that was already there and Trump has, by some recent estimates,
constructed
fewer than 25 miles of actually new barrier. The southwestern border is nearly
2,000 miles long.
But Jared
is on the case! According to The Post, he “convenes biweekly meetings in the
West Wing, where he questions an array of government officials about progress”
and “explains the president’s wishes.” Huh. Those wishes are hardly cryptic,
and how complicated can this questioning be? Already, The Post reported,
there’s grumbling that Jared is just an annoyance.
That
belittles his symbolic significance. Many journalists, including me, have tried
to settle on the perfect mascot for the Trump administration. There are choices
galore. The greedy, vainglorious Scott Pruitt, who did his best to decimate the
Environmental Protection Agency, fit the bill, but he’s long gone. Mike Pompeo embodies the Faustian arc of so many of the
president’s aides and allies, from principle-driven dismissal of Trump during
the 2016 campaign to reputation-torching submission when he dangled a ticket to
the big time.
But for
naked opportunism and situational scruples, Jared’s my guy. Remember how he and
Ivanka were going to contain the president’s ego, blunt his cruelty, whisper
sweet moderation in his ear? That was then. Now he’s devoting himself to an
exorbitant, unnecessary monument to Trump’s nativism and xenophobia.
There’s
an upside, though. With Jared in the saddle, this horse won’t go far.
Spending deal to give Trump $1.4 billion in wall funding
President Trump and congressional Republicans secured $1.375 billion in funding for a southern border wall as part of a massive year-end spending deal to fund the government through 2020.
The wall funding was a major sticking point in negotiations, but Democrats and Republicans agreed to the sum, which is the same level of spending allotted in 2019.
The legislation maintains Trump’s authority to transfer funds for more wall construction, which Democrats had also opposed.
Lawmakers in both parties were eager to avoid a spending showdown after a fight over wall funding earlier this year prompted a 35-day partial government shutdown.
Democrats have long opposed wall construction while Trump campaigned on increased border security and promised a wall along the southern border when he ran for president in 2016.
Lawmakers announced the details of the deal on Monday, ahead of a planned Tuesday vote. A stopgap spending bill expires Friday.
The spending legislation will be split into two measures, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, announced. The move to split up the spending reflects Trump’s objection to signing a single omnibus measure, although spending watchdog groups say putting all government spending into two bills isn’t much of an improvement for ensuring against wasteful spending.
Both parties touted wins in the $1.3 trillion measure.
Shelby noted the bill, in addition to providing wall funding, boosts defense spending by $22 billion.
“This legislation makes a robust investment in rebuilding our military and secures significant funds for the president’s border wall system,” Shelby said Monday. “Our hard work over the past few months has ensured a bipartisan path forward to complete our FY2020 appropriations process.”
Democrats had sought to zero out wall funding and to find a way to block Trump from using his authority to move funding from certain accounts to the construction of a border wall.
The funding is far below the more than $8 billion Trump was seeking to build more of the border wall.
Trump used an emergency declaration earlier this year to authorize moving about $7 billion in funding from other parts of the federal budget to the construction of a border wall.
Democrats praised funding in the two measures that will be used to boost election security and to study gun violence.
The measure includes a provision to raise the age of tobacco purchases to 21, and it permanently repeals the tax on high-end health insurance policies and medical devices, which were to become significant sources of funding for Obamacare but generated opposition.
“These bills are the product of bipartisan, bicameral compromise,” House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, a New York Democrat, said. “While there are some things that I would have done differently had I written these bills alone, I am very proud of the work we have completed.”
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