Trump’s Self-Massacre

Edward Luce: “Politics isn’t usually this simple. But Donald Trump lives and dies by marketing slogans. In this case — ‘Build the wall!’ — the outcome is near certain defeat. It’s all the more remarkable for being self-created. The fact that he only started to care about redeeming his promise after Democrats regained the House in the midterms, makes it even more self-destructive. He had two years of Republican control to push it through and failed. It’s hard to see Democrats striking almost any deal to fund a wall they revile and that even anti-immigrant hardliners concede would do little to fix America’s immigration problems… As a result, Trump is hurtling with great steam into an entirely needless train wreck.”

“The question is why he is only now becoming serious when he has the least chance of succeeding. The charitable answer is that he didn’t see the midterm election defeat coming. He tried to win that election by hyping up a crisis about an invasion of central American migrants. It backfired. This is his last chance to fund a wall. The uncharitable answer, which I think is the right one, is that Trump’s politics only works in a climate of permanent frenzy. A government shutdown meets that test.”

“But even if he got his wall, it wouldn’t redeem his election promise. The second half of his promise was ‘…and Mexico will pay for it.’ Two years later, Trump is holding the federal government to ransom in an attempt to force Americans to pay for it. We shouldn’t overlook that irony. In the unlikely event Trump upheld his promise, he would be breaking it.”