Donald Trump retweeted his own video claiming that “the wall is under construction right now,” but the whole thing is about as ridiculous as the national emergency he declared last week before setting off for a long weekend of golfing. Oh, there was some construction all right, but it certainly wasn’t the big fat concrete wall he promised, but rather fencing replacement, and not from “right now,” but rather from last September.
“The money for the steel-slatted barrier came from a congressional appropriation in 2017,” the New York Times reported, “not from newly authorized spending in the recent deal that averted a government shutdown, or from money the president is seeking to take from other federal projects under his national emergency declaration from last week.”
Congressional Democrats—and perhaps some Republicans—are set to challenge Trump’s fake emergency next week, in an effort being spearheaded in the House by Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro. "This is a historic power grab,” the Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair said, “and it will require historic unity by members of Congress—Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative—to counteract the president’s parasitic movement.”
Trump will surely moan and complain and demand to know why he can’t treat the U.S. government like his own personal charity, while continuing to ignore actual threats and crises facing our nation, like deadly white supremacists, asylum-seekers dying in U.S. custody, and the fact that his administration kidnapped thousands of children at the southern border and now says it’s just too darn hard to return them to their families. There’s your national emergency, Donald.