Say what you want about The Washington Examiner, but it’s not one of those far-left liberal “fake news” rags. It’s not quite up to the standards of the late and much lamented Washington Star, but it’s the factual and conservative alternative to the factual and left-leaning Washington Post. We therefore tend to believe its front page report that President Donald Trump hasn’t yet built a single mile of the big and beautiful and sea-to-shining-sea border wall on the southern border that he promised his supporters.
By all accounts there have been repairs and upgrades to the fences that previous Democratic and Republican congresses and presidents agreed to, but by no account has Mexico gladly paid for any of it, as Trump promised his supporters. At this point, though, no one much cares.
The Trump skeptics never believed for a moment that he was going to build a big beautiful wall along the southern border, much less that Mexico would gladly pay for it, but the true believers were well satisfied that he’d at least make such preposterous promises. Take Trump seriously but not literally, they’d say, and for the most part they’ve been right about that. Trump hasn’t built a single mile of border wall, but he’s enforcing border laws as cruelly as he can get can get away with, and his supporters rightly figure that’s a figurative if not literal sort of wall. The courts haven’t allowed the complete ban on Muslims entering the country that Trump promised, but he’s done his best to make the mostly law-abiding Muslims who are currently here feel uncomfortable, which should placate the fans.
There’s no telling how the next presidential election might turn out, but we will predict that it won’t result in a big and beautiful sea-to-shining-sea southern border wall that Mexico happily pays for.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 