Trump Channels Hannity and Lou Dobbs, Fearmongers for the Wall

[DonViejo]

Much of the Oval Office address echoed usual Trump rhetoric: hyperpartisan at points, and dripping with nativism. But in a notable way, Trump blinked.

Asawin Suebsaeng, Spencer Ackerman, Lachlan Markay, Maxwell Tani
01.08.19 10:20 PM ET

In the days before his Oval Office address on Tuesday night, Donald Trump leaned on a number of advisers on how to navigate the government shutdown he’d waged over funding for his border wall. The list included immigration hardliners Fox News host Sean Hannity and Fox Business star Lou Dobbs, both of whom, according to two sources familiar with the conversations, had a clear message for the president: push forward for the wall funding and break the Democrats’ will.

The president took the counsel of the hardliners. On Tuesday night he claimed that there was a “growing humanitarian” crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border—”a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul”—that required the construction of a physical barrier.

“Women and children are the biggest victims, by far, of our broken system,” Trump said at one point, his voice far softer than those thunderous calls for a Mexican-paid-for wall that he’d offered during the dog days of the 2016 presidential campaign. “This is the tragic reality of illegal immigration on our southern border. This is the cycle of human suffering that I am determined to end.”

Much of it echoed usual Trump rhetoric: heavy on fearmongering, hyperpartisan at points, and dripping with nativism. But in a notable way, Trump blinked. Hours before the televised speech, he had been contemplating declaring a national emergency in order to be able to unilaterally divert military funds for the construction of the border wall but that declaration notably didn’t make it into the final address. Trump didn’t even try to link border crossings with terrorism, despite days’ worth of his senior officials attempting to make that dubious connection.

Still, the speech illustrated both the agency that immigration restrictionists and conservative media figures continue to have within the White House, as well as the insatiable appetite the president appears to have for hyping threats along the southern border—threats that are largely divorced from realities on the ground.

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