So first thing on Monday morning, we said the following:
U.S. equity futs are lower for now, but we’ll see how it plays out. Hopefully Trump will refrain from tweeting anything that puts everyone in a sour mood.
Fast forward a few minutes and he was up and at ’em, ranting about the “caravans” again. “Heeeeere’s Johnny!”…
Mexico has the absolute power not to let these large “Caravans” of people enter their country. They must stop them at their Northern Border, which they can do because their border laws work, not allow them to pass through into our country, which has no effective border laws…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2018
…Congress must immediately pass Border Legislation, use Nuclear Option if necessary, to stop the massive inflow of Drugs and People. Border Patrol Agents (and ICE) are GREAT, but the weak Dem laws don’t allow them to do their job. Act now Congress, our country is being stolen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2018
To be clear, he’s talking about the northern march organized by People without Borders, but what you need to understand here is that he didn’t start tweeting about that on Sunday after doing a bunch of research or even after reading the original BuzzFeed article. He saw it on Fox. So don’t let anyone bullshit you by trying to suggest that the President is on top of things or has otherwise done his homework. Here’s the clip he saw.
Basically, a large group of Central Americans who have decided it’s safer to travel together to avoid being robbed, extorted, etc. are making their way north to the U.S. to seek asylum. There are roughly 1,000 of them and Mexico isn’t particularly interested in trying to stop them.
There are a ton of reasons why that’s not funny, but if you want to find some humor in an otherwise desperate situation (the migrants are fleeing crime in Honduras), just try to imagine Trump shouting at the TV about Mexico not only refusing to pay for his border wall, but also refusing to do anything to stop 1,000 Central Americans from reaching the U.S. border.
It’s hilarious and also fantastic because you have to know he’s terrified of what his supporters will think when pictures of 1,000 Hondurans figuratively knocking on America’s door start showing up on the evening news.
Contrary to what he probably thought while he was still candidate Trump, he cannot make Mexico do anything. Which means he is absolutely limp-dick-powerless in this situation and also when it comes to the wall more generally. That reality is now dawning on him, which is why he’s scrambling around to try and convince the Pentagon to fund his wall before his increasingly disaffected support base realizes that his campaign trail bombast was just that – nebulous bullshit that never had any hope of becoming reality.
Meanwhile, he’ll try and convince the rest of America that Democrats are at fault for the plight of DACA recipients (despite the fact that he ended DACA) and he’ll take that one step further by saying that because Democrats oppose his border wall, they also oppose the very concept of borders and therefore support drugs and crime:
DACA is dead because the Democrats didn’t care or act, and now everyone wants to get onto the DACA bandwagon… No longer works. Must build Wall and secure our borders with proper Border legislation. Democrats want No Borders, hence drugs and crime!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2018
Nothing further.
