President Trump’s decision to quote a Pat Buchanan alarmist op-ed peddling the sort white grievance politics on which he built his political career is a signal that at this point, Trump is not interested in persuading anybody on the merits of his border wall.
Trump quoted Buchanan in a series of tweets Sunday night:
The Trump portrait of an unsustainable Border Crisis is dead on. “In the last two years, ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with Criminal Records, including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes & 4000 violent killings.” America’s Southern….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2019
….Border is eventually going to be militarized and defended or the United States, as we have known it, is going to cease to exist…And Americans will not go gentle into that good night. Patrick Buchanan. The great people of our Country demand proper Border Security NOW!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2019
In his opinion piece, Buchanan urges Trump to declare a national emergency, and warns:
The only way to greater “diversity,” the golden calf of the Democratic Party, is to increase the number of women, African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics, and thereby reduce the number of white men.
Buchanan has long warned about the threat to white America posed by immigration. As has been noted, in 1999, Trump himself used his trademark bombast to call Buchanan a “Hitler lover” when he was considering challenging him for the Reform Party presidential nomination.
Without re-litigating the politics of the 1990s, it’s just worth observing that citing Buchanan clearly isn’t something that makes sense if Trump is interested in trying to convince persuadable Americans about the merits of a border wall. It’s something that only makes sense if he’s interested in signaling to a certain part of the electorate that he’s one of them, and is fighting for them.
It shouldn’t be shocking that Trump is losing the public opinion war over the shutdown badly. It isn’t a war he seems to be interested in winning.
