During the third week of the ongoing partial government shutdown, President Trump offered a stark message: Abducted women are being driven across the U.S.-Mexico border with tape on their mouths, and only a wall — a technology as age-tested as the wheel — would end it.
Trump hit the message repeatedly last week, invoking human and drug smuggling during his first prime-time Oval Office address on Tuesday before vividly describing bound women during roundtable events near the border in Texas and at the White House.
Democrats unreasonably refused to negotiate, Trump argued, even after the White House offered to accept less than the requested $5.7 billion and after Trump offered a steel-slat barrier rather than a concrete wall — as 800,000 federal workers missed a paycheck Friday.
Trump’s use of the trappings of his office to train public attention on his agenda — using the so-called bully pulpit of the presidency — has been notably more focused than past policy debates, such as the unsuccessful push to repeal Obamacare. Day after day, a Trump has been hammering home the argument for the wall in a variety of settings.
“He’s showing a little more discipline than he did in his early days,” said Boston University professor Thomas Whalen. “Believe it or not, he still has a ways to go on discipline — but he’s a little more focused on the message in terms of honing it down.”
Rutgers University professor David Greenberg, an expert on President Theodore Roosevelt’s pioneering use of the bully pulpit to focus press coverage and public attention, said that in the modern political era, “[T]he most important thing is driving home your message simply and clearly. And that’s something Teddy Roosevelt did and that Trump does.”
Even so, Trump has the bigger challenge when it comes to selling the public on persuading the public he is right in the shutdown debate, Greenberg said.
Insiders say that Trump personally deserves credit for the focused messaging, rather than a particular adviser.
“The president is a smart guy who has figured out how to be an even more effective president,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, who believes Trump’s emphasis on human trafficking effectively “reminds people it’s not America doing the brutalizing” at the border.
“I think it’s a big mistake to assume the president is being managed by his staff” on border wall messaging strategy, said Schlapp, who is married to White House Director of Strategic Communications Mercedes Schlapp.
A senior White House official echoed Schlapp, saying “credit should be given where it is due,” meaning to Trump.
Although recent additions to White House staff include communications director Bill Shine, who helped build Fox News into the top-rated cable news channel, messaging strategy on the wall push “mostly” has been crafted by Trump, the official said, noting he has “been pushing this since day one.”
Trump notoriously frowns on others claiming credit for his successes.
Whalen of Boston University said polling doesn’t suggest the public is converting en masse to Trump’s wall position, but that Trump can still benefit from the polarizing debate.
“The best-case scenario is that he weathers this political storm, that he will enter 2020 in pretty good political strength with a Republican Party united around him on the issue of border security. That’s the ultimate goal here,” Whalen said. “He’s trying to get his party fully united behind him.”
Even if he’s able to effectively wield the bully pulpit, Trump’s aggressive push is unlikely to break the congressional deadlock, said presidential historian George C. Edwards III.
“Examples of presidents moving public opinion to obtain majority support for their initiatives are rare. There are no recent examples. Presidents sometimes back policies that already have public support, of course,” Edwards said.
Nevertheless, the new message discipline may be helping Trump with Republicans.
“Trump has been successful in moving Republicans on the wall, probably because of the increased salience of the wall during the highly partisan shutdown. He cannot move Democrats at all. He is nowhere close to a majority,” Edwards said.
Schlapp, the Republican insider who leads the ACU, argued that polls specifically on a border wall are “cherry picked” and belie deeper support for border security.
