All through the campaign we heard how the nasty guy was going to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, even getting his supporters to chant, “Build the wall!” To fulfill that promise on Monday morning the nasty guy demanded funding for at least part of the wall be put into the spending bill that must be passed by Friday to avoid a government shutdown. The threat seemed to be: fund my wall or I shut down the gov’t. I also heard of a threat that if the wall wasn’t funded then the various pieces of the Affordable Care Act would also not be funded.
But Democrats displayed fierce opposition and by Monday afternoon the nasty guy had caved, afraid of another legislative failure.
A couple GOP senators, perhaps acting as nasty guy surrogates, responded by saying that “tall beautiful wall” is only a metaphor for better border security.
Just as well. Mexico environmental officials are preparing to fight the wall because it would make flooding on the Rio Grande worse.
But don’t gloat too much. McEwan reminds us:
Powerful cowards are very dangerous. Especially powerful cowards who have only earned praise for dropping bombs.
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