January 1, 2019

To state the obvious, clearly Trump does not want a wall at the border.

He wants a talking point.

With 17 investigations looking at his foundation, business, campaign and administration and a cascading river of breaking stories for the last several months Trump has set a record for losing consecutive news cycles so that even his most ardent supporters are left with doubt in their little dark souls.

He could have had a compromise on the wall, some wall for legalizing the DACA kids. It was agreed to but then someone, maybe Miller, said if you actually build a wall two things will happen 1) It won't really have any significant impact, especially on asylum seekers who are turning themselves in so that they can apply for asylum and 2) you won't have any issue to try and drag everyone away from the scandals as it turns out that Americans aren't really excited about trade wars, tariffs and all the other nonsense.

I expect that Trump will cave and then once again paint him as the greatest martyr since Jesus was nailed to a cross and simultaneously pat himself on the back for being "the bigger man" and continue to harp about the wall, which is his main objective.

I would love for Speaker Pelosi to hold hearings on the House on the question of border security and the wall and have all of the critics of the wall explain the real world failures of walls and invite Trump to make a statement and take questions from the committee. Of course, unlike Secretary Clinton who underwent a marathon grilling by a House committee Trump would make it a marathon negotiation and then ultimately not show even though his outsized ego will be whispering "go to Congress and show them how its done".

In any case Trump could have had a portion of the wall approved and signed but he really doesn't want it, he just wants to harangue about it.