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Trump doesn’t want a wall, all he wants is an issue

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Trump is betting his presidency not on the actual physical wall, but the rhetorical barrier of the wall
I saw something on Twitter the other day that said if you’re an American, you are descended from Native Americans, slaves, refugees, or immigrants. It’s true. Even Donald Trump, anti-immigrant-in-chief, is descended from German and Scottish stock.
So what explains Trump’s anti-immigrant fervor and the anti-immigration mania Trump has been able to tap into since the day he descended the escalator in Trump Tower and began his campaign with lies about Mexican immigrants being rapists and drug dealers?
We learned recently that the whole idea of building a wall along the border with Mexico was a Roger Stone gimmick. Once Stone saw how Trump’s anti-immigration message was resonating with potential voters, he came up with the idea of a wall along the Mexican border as mnemonic device to keep him on-message with immigration as a primary issue in his campaign.
It worked. He’s still at it. In fact, he shut down a significant portion of the government not as a way to actually get the money to build his wall, but to keep his base satiated. Trump is looking down the dark tunnel of the next two years and all he can see are the dual headlights of Mueller and a Democratic House of Representatives coming straight at him. He’s desperately afraid that if he loses his base of support among Republican voters, he’ll lose the presidency either to the legal jeopardy he faces with Mueller, or the political jeopardy he faces with a congress exercising its power to impeach him.
He is betting his presidency on the wall. Not on the actual physical wall, but the rhetorical barrier of the wall. He sees the wall as the only thing standing between him and the street, and he’s going to do everything in his power to keep it there. Trump didn’t bang his fists on the table and storm out of his so-called “negotiating session” with congressional leaders this week because Nancy Pelosi said “no” to funding his wall. He stormed out to prove to his base of supporters that he is as anti-immigrant as they are, that he doesn’t just want to stop illegal immigration, he wants to stop legal immigration as well.
The futility of it all is remarkable. People have always wanted to emigrate from one place to another. If they hadn’t, the United States of America wouldn’t exist. We began as a nation of immigrants, and we’re still a nation of immigrants, if only because we have to be. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the birthrate in this country is at a 30 year low.
“The number of babies born in 2017, around 3.85 million, was the lowest since 1987, the Journal reported. “In order for the country’s population to essentially replace itself, researchers say that 2,100 babies should be born for every 1,000 women. In 2017, the total fertility rate—an estimate of the total number of children a woman will eventually have in her lifetime — was 1,765 births per 1,000 women, well below what is known as the replacement level.” Only two states, South Dakota and Utah, had birthrates that reached the “replacement level,” according to the Journal. Put another way, in order for the United States to maintain its population at current levels, the birth rate should be 2.1. Instead, it’s less than 1.8.
A recent report from the World Bank based on United Nations data shows a steeply declining birthrate in the United States since 1960. In 1960, the birthrate in this country was 3.

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