Not all conservatives are lunatics for Bozo. Nor all Republicans.

The Crisis is not on the Border

Because I undoubtedly committed a grievous sin either in my youth or another life (depending on your theology), I found myself having to debate the national “crisis” at the border with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski Monday night.

Lewandowski dutifully recited his talking points, including insisting that the president would be justified in declaring a national emergency to build the wall and seize property from landowners along the border.

I had stronger language in mind, but called Lewandowski’s argument a “Vesuvius of BS.”

We can expect more of the same from the president tonight when he gives an address from the Oval Office .

Boxed into a political corner of his own making, the president will insist that the nation faces a “humanitarian and security crisis” that requires him to push for the costly, ineffective boondoggle formerly known as the wall. 

(It is now something between a steel barrier and a set of Venetians blinds. And Mexico still won’t pay for the thing.)

All of this is familiar, and needs some context.

It was that great Democratic intellectual, Rahm Emanuel, who observed that, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.” 

Trump’s variation on the theme is, basically, “Never let a serious political problem stop you from inventing a fictious crisis.”

To be sure there are problems at the border; a humanitarian disaster that is largely a product of Trump’s own policy of deterrence through cruelty, and there is a modest uptick in the number of arrests on the border. 

Families continue to trek north from Central America.

But there is no crisis; just as there was no crisis when he dispatched troops to stop the “invasion” by the caravan before the midterm elections.

And more.

Pushed on the bogus terror number, Lewandowski fell back on insisting that we need a multibillion-dollar wall if it “saves even one life.”

This makes for a nice soundbite, but it is the precisely the kind of public policymaking that conservatives have resisted (and often mocked) for decades. 

Imagine, for example, the EPA or FDA adopting the standard that “one American life is too many” in promulgating new regulations.

Unfortunately, this has become the norm of Trumpism, in which anecdotes overwhelm statistics, and the president’s absurdist proposals override rational policy discussion. 

And more.

Thank you, Ms. Rubin.