Cracks in the Wall

Rather: The wall manned by Ann Coulter, who cast rotten produce the president’s way after he said Friday he would “never” sign another funding agreement of this kind. “Yeah, because you’ll be impeached,” she tweeted.

The wall manned by Jack Posobiec, who said after Trump scribbled his signature to paper that he’d spoken to “many high-profile Trump supporters,” not one who thinks “the GOP will keep the House now.”

The wall manned by a line of ineffective dietary supplements. “TRUMP BASE REVOLTS OVER SIGNING OF BUDGET BILL,” an Infowars headline screamed, perhaps carnally.

Throughout the tumultuous first 14 months of the Trump White House—during which time retiring Republicans like Bob Corker and Jeff Flake often have chastised the president publicly for his behavior, and a few with no immediate prospects of stepping down (like Ben Sasse) have done the same, and tons keeping their jobs have grumbled off the record—the president has maintained unflinching support from a hodgepodge of characters, be they fringe figures like Bill Mitchell, whose creative servility would manifest in figure skating as a centuple lutz, or accomplished conservative pundits like Ann Coulter.

But Coulter’s support—that of an experienced voice recognized in the mainstream—has frayed in recent months. On Friday she was joined by the battier elements of Trump’s Twitter army, whose relevance is tied directly to the president’s—and whose power rests with their ability to magnetize the outer rim of American politics to its center. What does Trumpism look like without the couriers who carry its message 140 or 280 characters at a time?

Vice President Mike Pence may have answered that question in an Atlanta hotel ballroom on Friday afternoon. There for an America First super PAC event to tout the effects of the (quite popular) Republican tax bill, the ever-steady messenger demonstrated again his capacity for straining gruel into bisque. “When it comes to the wall, we’re gonna build it all,” he rhymed, to a three-quarters’ standing ovation from the audience.

Pence’s salesmanship was evident in his terminology, claiming that 100 miles of new “border wall”—emphasis on that last word—will be built as a result of the omnibus legislation enacted Friday. Which, of course, isn’t true. As it has been with previous funding packages, the dollars provided for border structures in this latest bill go toward barrier designs currently deployed between the United States and Mexico. Those designs, as former press secretary Sean Spicer explained last year, include steel bollards and are for levees in some circumstances, “rather than the concrete prototypes Trump appears to favor,” the Washington Post reported.

The VP was touting a bill that the president threatened to veto just hours before. But he hedged with “this bill isn’t perfect” talk—the appropriate segue into pushing congressional authorization for a line-item veto, “so the president can fund the priorities of the American people and protect taxpayers at the same time.” Ripping Congress is typically an effective applause line, for a president of either party. On percentage, Trump’s popularity among Republicans remains well into the 80s. But a CBS News poll earlier in March found that the split between Republicans satisfied and dissatisfied with the productivity of GOP congress members was 60/37.

This is not an insignificant gap. It underscores the notion that Trump supporters—who comprise the overwhelming majority of his party—are on the side of Trump, rather than congressional Republicans, or even the party generally. When Trump succeeds, GOP congressmen merely are legionnaires. When he fails, they’re obstacles.

But when Trump approves, even reluctantly, the legislation those Trumpists despise—whether for a lack of assertiveness on the border, or because of too much money spent abroad, or too much money, in general (that an ironic hallmark of recent fiscal conservatism)—who is to say they won’t blur the White House with the speaker’s office?

Pence made his message distinctive: an unmistakable campaign event, in fact, not only given the super PAC that sanctioned it, but right down to the rehashed rhetoric from the 2016 trail. The beseeching voters to inform their neighbors of “what they’re not hearing on most of the cable television stations.” To tell them “I talked to Mike.” To proselytize—but folksy-like.

Much of Trump’s appeal has been based on such an idea of how the shoebox is designed, not what’s inside. Now the most ardent of Trumpists found out what it’s like to walk in a frustrated Freedom Caucus member’s shoes.