“You’re fired” was the catchphrase that made former President Donald Trump a reality TV star, but “Build the wall” was the one that propelled him into the White House.
The question is whether it can do so again in 2024 as President Joe Biden faces persistently low marks for his management of the border or whether other Republicans have stolen Trump’s thunder.
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Immigration and border control were the top issues that separated Trump from the pack of 17 major Republican presidential candidates in 2016, even as the media and political operatives recoiled from his often caustic rhetoric about illegal immigrants from the moment he launched his campaign.
Some of Trump’s Republican primary opponents held similar immigration views but were more subdued in their expression of them or assigned them a lower priority. Others, like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), had previously supported immigration reforms that would have legalized large numbers of undocumented immigrants and were therefore viewed as amnesty by the GOP base.
Early Trump supporters such as Steve Bannon, who eventually became the 45th president’s chief White House strategist, and former Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the first senator to endorse Trump and his first attorney general, favored reductions to legal immigration. So did the conservative columnist Ann Coulter, whose book In Trump We Trust was largely an argument for immigration restrictions. She broke with Trump when she felt he failed to deliver on those promises.
Trump himself spoke of stepped-up deportations and curbing Muslim immigration into the United States, the latter policy backed by three-quarters of 2016 South Carolina GOP primary voters, according to a CBS News exit poll.
“A majority said that immigration can be a good thing, but they worried that immigration rates are currently too high, and that the U.S. is not selecting immigrants based on their ability to contribute to the country,” the political scientist George Hawley wrote in 2019 about a national survey of Trump supporters used in a Brookings working paper.
But Trump didn’t use these details to energize supporters at his raucous rallies. For that, he preferred to lead “Build that wall” chants to illustrate his proposal to erect a strong physical barrier at the southern border and make Mexico pay for it.
“You know, if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of, maybe, thinking about leaving, I can sort of tell the audience, I just say, ‘We will build the wall!’ and they go nuts,” Trump told the New York Times editorial board.
According to Trump, everything was going swimmingly at the border until Biden eased immigration controls and triggered an influx of migrants. Curtailing the border surge is a big part of the restoration Trump promises if he beats Biden in a rematch next year. Sometime Trump adviser Dick Morris included “complete the border wall” in what he characterized as “a list of the stuff” the former president “began and initiated but was interrupted” by Biden.
Republicans are nevertheless divided on whether Trump’s wall constitutes unfinished business or an unfulfilled campaign promise. After turning against Trump, Coulter began tweeting daily about the border wall. “Miles completed yesterday — zero,” she would write. “Miles completed since Inauguration — zero.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Trump’s main rival for the 2024 GOP nomination, has taken veiled shots at the front-runner’s immigration record. DeSantis has called his own plan “Mission Stop the Invasion No Excuses.”
“We’re actually going to build the wall,” DeSantis said in New Hampshire. “A lot of politicians chirp. They make grandiose promises and then fail to deliver the actual results. The time for excuses is over. Now is the time to deliver results and finally get the job done.”
Trump was not amused. “Well, his plan is my plan,” he complained to Semafor. “I mean, he’s basically copied everything I said — catch and release, finish the wall.”
At the same time, it is clear that most Republicans now sing a version of Trump’s tune on controlling immigration.
“I don’t think it plays a role in the primaries because everybody in the primaries basically agrees with the Trump position,” Republican strategist John Feehery said.
But it will be an issue in the general election since 59.4% disapprove of Biden’s handling of immigration, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average.
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That will likely remain true if Trump is the Republican nominee or someone else.
“While I don’t think it is as potent as 2016, there is still a strong desire among most Americans, not just Republicans, to fix our broken immigration system,” GOP strategist Jon Gilmore said. “This includes securing the border by whatever means necessary while at the same time working to ensure a fair path to citizenship. As someone who married an immigrant and went through the legalization process with her, I can speak firsthand that the process is broken for those trying to do the right thing. This does nothing but encourage illegal entry through an unsecure border.”
