Shutdown, Building the Wall, Immigration and Does Donald Trump Have a Plan?

Jean-Eric Branaa analyzes the current situation in the United States against the backdrop of the government shutdown and the proposed construction of a wall along the Mexican border. He believes Donald Trump to be in a not unfavorable position, as immigration is a subject he controls and this allows him to maintain pressure on the Democrats.*

Branaa is a lecturer at Panthéon-Assas (Paris II) and a researcher at the university’s Thucydide Center. He is author of “Trumpland: Portrait of a Divided America,” (Privat, October 2017), and his most recent publication is “1968: When America Roared” (Privat, May 2018).

Le Figaro: Donald Trump must now deal with the shutdown, which is bound up in the dispute over building a wall on the Mexican border, which the Democrats oppose. Where are we in this situation? How can this crisis be resolved?

Branaa: We’re in a very complicated situation, one might even call it a deadlock. Neither of the two camps are giving way on any significant ground around the subject of immigration. We’ve never had a situation where what’s at stake in the shutdown was also at stake in the last presidential election and will almost certainly be at stake in the next: the wall along the Mexican border. The question now is whether it’s going to be built or not, as the whole resistance movement around Trump is focused on this one question. It would therefore be unfortunate if the Democrats were to end up paying for the wall, showing that they’ve given way on immigration, which is the main focus of Trump’s demands. On the contrary, they believe an alternative solution is possible. A “technological wall,” started by Barack Obama with drones, surveillance cameras, listening devices … all to control the border at a lower cost rather than having a wall which would be proof only of Donald Trump’s oversized ego, as he is poised to build a wall 3,000 kilometers long (approximately 1,864 miles).

Le Figaro: But what would this wall look like? Is it technically possible?

Branaa: In reality, this wall will never get off the ground. The current wall is 930 kilometers long (approximately 578 miles). That means building more than 2,000 kilometers of wall (approximately 1,243 miles) in two years to complete the missing section. It’s impossible, for one reason, because it requires appropriation of land which doesn’t all belong to the federal government. Some of it belongs to Native American reservations, other parts belong to other individuals. Taking the property would require a lot of time, longer than the two years that remain until the next presidential election, or even the six years remaining until the end of Trump’s possible second term. It’s clear this wall can’t be built, so the question is not about the cost of the wall, nor the cost of the shutdown, which has already exceeded the cost of the wall. Rather, it’s a question of politics. The Democrats don’t want to let Trump win.

Yet at the same time, Trump has already won. He keeps immigration at the forefront of discussion, which has been his great success. He keeps bringing it back into play when the Democrats want to kick it out of bounds. They tried moving the discussion on to social issues and health insurance during the midterms, but as we saw, immigration always came back on top.

Le Figaro: So it’s a political coup for Trump, who wants to head strongly into the next presidential election with the immigration question which he controls …

Branaa: That’s exactly right. He keeps the pressure on with immigration and will then be able to say that the Democrats prevented him from building the wall, and so any problems linked to immigration are their fault. So every time there’s another story linked to immigration in the news, he attacks the Democrats. By exaggerating every incident, he ramps up the pressure he already has exerted on them. Now he has a platform to build on. That doesn’t mean to say it will be his only strength during the next campaign, he has far stronger accomplishments – something that was largely ignored during the midterms – his success on the economy.

Le Figaro: That poses the question about the reasons for his success and methods. Where is he at with his iconoclastic diplomacy, in particular, with regard to his tweeting?

Branaa: We’re simply no longer having to deal with his tweeting. There’s been a real change in the last five or six months. One has become aware of a new Trump, particularly since the arrival of Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. With them in tow, Trump has become a Republican like the others. Part of his presidency now belongs to the party, chiefly his foreign policy. Trump continues to blow hot and cold, but Bolton, for example, tours the Middle East attempting to make up for Trump’s outbursts and their effects. They’re in the process of introducing a change in model. Trump watches his rhetoric, while they dish out the diplomacy.

Le Figaro: Justly, with regard to the geopolitical situation, Trump has withdrawn troops from Syria, but he is back on the offensive with Recip Tayyip Erdogan …

Branaa: He is clearly in the process of implementing another of his campaign promises, that the United States will no longer be the world’s policeman, the main idea being that American interventionism costs the taxpayer a lot of money and it’s therefore necessary for soldiers to come home. But there are a lot of them, 240,000 on overseas operations. This becomes even more important when it’s only geo-economics that interest the president: selling arms, making deals. This was clear before, and now that responsibility has been taken over. As I explained earlier, American diplomacy is no longer in his hands. For the most part it’s Pompeo and Bolton who guide him, but also Congress.

We’ve seen the insistence of certain senators, notably Lindsey Graham, with regard to what ought to be U.S. foreign policy and the role of the United States in the world. It’s a debate which at least partly eludes Americans who aren’t that interested, but Trump benefits from the effects of the pronouncements that please his electoral base. With Erdogan, he exaggerates enormously, recalling his rhetoric about Kim Jong Un and the “much bigger and more powerful” nuclear button, when he similarly threatened to totally destroy North Korea at the United Nations.

It’s this rhetoric that the voters love. But alongside that, he allows certain members of his entourage to advance their own pawns. It’s because of this that Congress is so united in support of Trump with regard to the shutdown, leaving him free to pursue his domestic policy and, ultimately, re-election.

*Editor’s note: President Trump agreed to reopen the federal government for three weeks on Jan. 25, 2019, after this article was written. The editors believe this commentary nevertheless remains relevant.