After spending weeks trying to placate Democrats by suggesting they could call his border wall something else, President Trump is now not only insisting that it will be a “wall,” but he’s referring to existing barriers as walls.
This means at least one of two things. First, he has definitely given up on negotiating a deal with Democrats. Calling what the stuff he wants to build a wall means he can forget about compromising with them, not that they were going to compromise anyway. Second, it could also mean he has decided to declare the situation at the border an emergency and have the military build the wall.
Or maybe not. He’s also calling existing barriers, which continue to be built and repaired, walls. That sounds like he may have given up on building an actual new wall and wants to campaign on things that are already there and on things short of an actual wall that are being built by terming them walls.
My bet is that he will declare an national emergency. But the problem with this is that once a Democrat becomes president, they will declare health care, the climate, or school snack time a national emergency and do whatever they want. They will probably do this anyway, but it’s periloous to set the precedent.