Breaking News: Trump doing stuff that he promised to do!
If the Trump campaign had one signature line—one yuge line—it was that we’re going to build a wall.
Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order to begin construction of a wall along the Mexican border.
That doesn’t mean Congress will pay for the estimated $14-billion cost or that opponents won’t mount arguments that the wall will have limited impact and isn’t worth the expense. But Trump did what he said he was going to do.
White House officials also leaked word that Trump will temporarily bar immigrants from seven terror-plagued countries where Muslims are a majority (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen). The idea is to call a halt until tougher visa restrictions are in place. This was the modification of Trump’s original campaign pledge that all Muslim immigrants would be temporarily barred. He struck an emotional chord by recognizing, in the audience at Homeland Security, families who had a loved one killed by an illegal immigrant.
What’s striking about this is that each of these proposals caused a media and political uproar during the campaign. The wall was widely mocked, especially the part about making Mexico pay for it. (Trump told ABC’s David Muir that Mexico will indeed pay, perhaps in “complicated” form, and that construction will begin in months.) And some pundits essentially declared Trump’s campaign over when he announced the Muslim immigration ban.
There was also a theory during the campaign—sometimes voiced by his supporters—that Trump throws out a lot of wild ideas but he won’t actually do this stuff if he somehow wins the White House. Uh, no.
Whether these are good or bad ideas—he also signed an order to carry out his promised crackdown on federal aid to sanctuary cities—President Trump is delivering on what candidate Trump said he would do. And with a Supreme Court nominee coming next week, he’s off to a fast start.
At the same time, there have been all these distractions, some of them self-inflicted. Topping the list is Trump’s insistence that up to 5 million people voted illegally in the election, for which he has no evidence. Trump doubled down yesterday by asking for an investigation, which will undoubtedly find outdated and duplicate voter rolls in many states—but that doesn’t necessarily translate into massive voter fraud.
Via Fox News