Border wall

Given just how unpopular illegal immigration is, it is stunning to see both the likely nominees for president fumbling the issue. That’s political malpractice.  For Biden, the malpractice consists not only in keeping the border open, which is already killing him in the polls, but in resisting the strongest Republican proposals to close it. Every time Republican congressional leaders visit the White House to negotiate, they come away empty handed.   In stiff-arming the Republican proposals, the White House has put itself in the awkward position of saying it will grudgingly accept their efforts but only if Republicans make concessions on other issues.

President Joe Biden doesn’t answer many questions without his handler-approved list of reporters. So when he does occasionally go rogue, you can rest assured his answers are coming from the heart. Last week, when Fox News reporter Peter Doocy — or as Joe likes to call him, the “one-horse pony” — asked the president why he didn’t plan on visiting the border during his trip to Arizona, Joe had a rare moment of honesty. “There are more important things going on,” he shouted on the White House South Lawn. Arizonans — and the rest of America — might disagree. A Gallup poll earlier this year showed that 41 percent of Americans worry “a great deal” about illegal immigration.

The liars are being lied to and it is a sight to behold. White House press secretary Jen Psaki is offering the likes of Kaitlan Collins and Peter Alexander a tutorial on how to be patronizing in the briefing room — not that they need it. The most recent example came when Psaki said the Biden administration has a handle on the overwhelming influx of illegals at the southern border. This, by all accounts, is not true. CBS reported this that the number of unaccompanied minors in Border Patrol custody is at an all-time high. While the talking heads on CNN and MSNBC might not be screaming about kids in cages, they are quietly acknowledging unaccompanied children in overflow facilities. Words matter.

I had lunch yesterday with a friend from London who brought grim tidings from Albion. Like me, he is an advocate of national sovereignty. He thinks the people of the United Kingdom ought to be allowed to govern themselves. So he, again like me, is an advocate for Brexit. He had no idea what was going to happen with Brexit. Yesterday was a busy day. I also chatted with friends about the crisis at our southern border. All honest people acknowledge that there is a crisis, that thousands upon thousands of people, most without English and without skills, are pouring over the border.

If the modern left has an original sin, it’s redefining language. Much of the craziness of the culture wars and the idiocy of identity politics can be boiled down to one critical problem: we have lost the ability to talk to one another because we have lost our shared language. When one group of people uses critical words like ‘violence,’ and ‘safety,’ in ways that do not represent the historic meaning of these words, conversation breaks down. This time, it’s not the left, but the right, that is guilty of redefining language and using that new fangled definition to shut down and destroy the fabric of our national debate.

The Senate will pass a resolution to disapprove President Donald Trump’s declaration of an emergency on the border, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday. Fellow Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul became the fourth Republican to join 47 Senate Democrats in support of a House-passed disapproval resolution, virtually ensuring that the measure will reach Trump’s desk. It is expected that when the measure reaches him, President Trump will exercise his veto for the first time. To override a presidential veto, the measure would need to secure two-thirds support in both bodies of Congress – an extremely high bar to reach. The House fell 40 votes short of two-thirds passage on the measure last week.

Ever the showman, Donald Trump did something during his press conference that was another presidential first. He broke into song in the middle of his soliloquy about the need for a border wall. In a refrain that was sure to send shivers down the spines of those who see him as an aspiring tyrant, Trump mocked the judicial system in a sing-song voice, declaring that while he might experience a few bumps in the rutted constitutional road, victory at the hands of the Supreme Court was a foregone conclusion. It would be the Muslim ban all over again. Not everyone was in harmony with Trump. Perhaps the most notable dissenter is Ann Coulter. Trump threw shade at her during his press conference. Rush Limbaugh is a tireless speaker. Tucker Carlson is a fine fellow. And Coulter?

It’s classic Trump. A president who knows the virtues of suspense is not going to render a final verdict on the congressional spending deal – which Fox News host Sean Hannity deemed ‘garbage’ – until the very last moment, trying to make it look as though he’s the Decider, when he really has little choice about whether to sign off on it. El Paso, where he ranted last night about the need to finish a wall he never even started, was his personal Alamo.After the 35-day government shutdown, which tanked his favorability ratings, Trump can hardly afford to create déjà vu all over again with a fresh one.

Donald Trump is not always as charming as P.G. Wodehouse. Nevertheless, his magnificent State of the Union Address tonight put me in mind of this remark from the preface of Plum’s great novel Summer Lightning: ‘A certain critic,’ Wodehouse wrote, ‘made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained “all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.”’ Waxing utopian, Wodehouse wondered whether, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha, that critic had by now been eaten by bears. Had he survived, though, said critic would not be able to make the same complaint about Summer Lightning.

Donald Trump’s reputation took a battering during the shutdown. He said he would own it, and he did. He took the blame and then he took the hit when he agreed to end the partial federal closure without winning funding for his border wall. So what was the point? A new set of polling figures reveals the point with hard numbers. It turns out that while his stand was broadly unpopular across the country, his no-nonsense stance resonated with one critical cohort of voters – people in key battleground districts, those that voted Trump in 2016 but swung Democratic in the midterms. They gave him the win on the wall and border security.

President Trump, to use his favorite canine terminology, choked like a dog today. In acceding to a three-week continuing resolution to fund the government, he rolled over for Nancy Pelosi and she didn’t even throw him a bone. Pelosi may not be able to muzzle the voluble Trump but she has figured out how to bring him to heel.His failure to procure a single cent for a border wall is already enraging his erstwhile supporters on the right. Ann Coulter: ‘Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States.’ Having prompted him to fight an unwinnable battle, they’re now denouncing him for fleeing his personal Alamo.

After his soporific performance last night on national television, Donald Trump is back in form. He just engineered a fresh shutdown this afternoon. At a meeting with congressional Democrats this afternoon, Trump threw a temper tantrum, slamming his fist on the Resolute Desk and exiting the Oval Office. He tweeted, ‘Just left a meeting with Chuck and Nancy, a total waste of time. I asked what is going to happen in 30 days if I quickly open things up, are you going to approve Border Security which includes a Wall or Steel Barrier? Nancy said, NO. I said bye-bye, nothing else works!’By the bye, Trump is insisting that Republicans have never been more unified.

Donald Trump is trashing America. Garbage is piling up from California national parks to the Washington mall as Trump insists on keeping the federal government shutdown over his request for a totemic border wall. The longer he’s cooped up in the White House, the crazier his pronouncements seem to become. Once upon a time a defiant Trump declared, ‘I am proud to shutdown the government.’ He figured this would be enough to scare Chuck and Nancy into compliance. It didn’t. Instead, they were emboldened. Schumer, who previously offered Trump a cool $25 billion in wall money in exchange for liberating the Dreamers, isn’t budging. And Pelosi is openly scoffing at him.