Trump traveled to the border and accomplished nothing of substance
By Victor Landa, NewsTaco
[tweet_dis]You can add another descriptor to the many that have been pinned to date on Donald Trump: inconsiderate.[/tweet_dis]This doesn’t mean that the many other labels are now replaced, it means that with his visit today to the U.S.-Mexico border Trump is now worthy of a hyphenated-label. He’s an inconsiderate-megalomaniac, an inconsiderate-clown, an inconsiderate-side show.
[pullquote]… he got every major news organization to talk about him when they could have been talking about many other pressing issues.[/pullquote]Here’s why: There was no need for him to trudge (technically he flew in his private jet, it was the media that trudged) all the way to Laredo, Texas, to do and say nothing of substance. [tweet_dis]Trump and the gaggle of reporters that follow him could have stayed in New York and accomplished the same amount of nothing.[/tweet_dis]
He traveled close to 2,000 miles to reiterate a problem as he sees it, but he brought nothing to the discussion that could be taken as a solution – no policy, no politics, and no substance.
That doesn’t mean he didn’t accomplish anything. On the contrary, the cameras followed him, he co-opted the moment for a few grand-standing applause lines, and he got every major news organization to talk about him when they could have been talking about many other pressing issues.
[pullquote]… he could have stayed in New York to do that.[/pullquote]He didn’t need the border backdrop to say nothing new, but he needed a big gesture to keep his name in the headlines, a media moment to toss another mouthful of red meat to his followers. The media obliged him for the same reason we fire-up helicopters to cover car wrecks or fill political talk shows with verbal pugilists – it’s easy.
There was a bit of drama – and the media loves drama – when the Border Patrol union that invited him, uninvited him at the last moment. Trump played it off as a vague testament to his power, he said the union was ordred to uninvite him, and the order came from “Washington.” No one in the press corp checked him on it.
So should we blame Trump for knowing how to ride the relentless media stream? Or better yet, does that qualify him to be the President of the U.S.?
More to the point, what does he think should be done with the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants who are living in the U.S.? How, specifically, will he secure the border, what will that look like? How exactly does the Mexican government organize the sending of their criminals across their northern border to become the U.S.’s problem? What proof does he have the “the Hispanics love him?”
He’s given us no answers, and he could have stayed in New York to do that.
[Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr]
