In 2015, when Donald Trump announced he would be running from president, this was part of his speech:
“I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall.”
And he kept this up, in part because he doesn’t really understand what “trade deficit” means.
Now it’s 2019, and this has just happened:
BREAKING NEWS
Trump: During the campaign, I would say Mexico would pay for it, I NEVER SAID THIS and never meant they would write out a check. pic.twitter.com/wYCUhAzshp— Scott McGrew (@ScottMcGrew) January 10, 2019
It’s worth adding that his statement goes on to say “I said they’re going to pay for it. They are.” So now they’ve gone from paying for it in money to via some rather more abstract sense, it would appear. Friendship, perhaps?
Now, it’s worth adding that his whole “we will build a wall and Mexico will pay for it” rhetoric has shifted subtly over the years.
During the campaign the claimed was that Mexico would pay for it which, obviously, was never going to happen.
That changed to that Mexico would reimburse the US for it (also not happening) to that Mexico would pay for it via tariffs (which isn’t how tariffs work, not least because it’s a charge on businesses and not on the Mexican government) to the idea that the money saved in eliminating illegal drugs from the US would save so much that the wall would be paid for many times over (…what?) and most recently that the Mexico-US trade deal will pay for it (which hasn’t been ratified yet, and won’t necessarily bring more money into the US).
This, however, is the first time that Trump has straight up said that Mexico won’t be actually be paying for the wall in any meaningful way and that he’d never suggested otherwise. Which is an interesting rewriting of very very very recent and well documented history.
It remains to be seen how well this goes down with his voting base – which is the only bit of the American public Trump is concerned about.
Will they happily accept this new version of reality, or will the idea that they have to pay for the wall themselves instead of making a bunch of brown foreigners do it take all the fun out of having a wall in the first place?
Either version feels like the worst outcome, really.