Trump endte foreløbigt slaget om de offentlige ansattes lønninger, der var blevet fanget i de stejle positioner mellem præsidenten og hans Demokratiske opposition i kampen om den kommende grænsemur. Foreløbigt, for Trump gav kun et 3 ugers moratorium til at nå til en enighed om et kompromis, ellers ville han sikre sig finansiering på anden måde, hvilket ville betyde at han erklærede en national krise, som er præsidentens ret efter eget forgodtbefindende, og lader militæret bygge en mur.

Demokraterne og pressen udlagde det som Trumps nederlag. Han blinkede først og sidder nu, efter at have spildt en masse penge, nøjagtig med det samme udgangspunkt for forhandlinger, som før han lukkede for dele af den offentlige service. Hån, spot og latterliggørelse i dagevis – og det er nok ikke klogt, skriver Conrad Black i National Review: “They should have noted the finesse with which he played his role in the Kavanaugh affair”

On this occasion, Senator Schumer has been a trumpeter swan: “The president has learned his lesson,” an orgy of crowing and gloating. But the Democrats made themselves hoarse throughout the shutdown promising that if government fully reopened, all things were possible on “border security,” though Speaker Pelosi continued her robotic mantra on the evils of a wall. In this new phase, the shoe will be on the other foot. Border security won’t really be enhanced by drones and cameras, if there are not obstacles or appropriately trained, equipped, and instructed personnel to detain illegal entrants and an adequate judicial and detention apparatus to end the longstanding and often tragic farce of simply releasing these people into the country to make their way, and clog the welfare and education facilities of America. The Democrats will have to deliver something believable on border security, and if they repair to the leftist house of debating cards, that there is no problem and therefore nothing need be done except a few humanitarian measures, they will be hammered.

(…)

The president seized what he could, held it as long as he could without being tanked, and though reviled even more strenuously than usual by the neutral media, lost only a few points in the polls and elicited fairyland Democratic promises to take border security seriously if only the starving workers were brought back and their advancing suffering alleviated. February 15 already hovers over the contestants, and this time it will be easier to start building the border security that the experts recommend, and it will be hard to lay it all at the door of Trump’s arbitrariness and grumpiness. The president will have an ironclad case to begin putting up the necessary barriers, leaving Ann Coulter (whose supposed veto over the president’s conduct, which she never claimed, has been exposed as another Democratic talking point) speaking to herself with her customary panache.

 

Scott Adams, der ser Trump som en genial retoriker (master persuader), er enig og har længe forudsagt at Trump ville få en mur, ikke fra kyst til kyst, som han er blevet det skudt i skoene, men en klar fysisk barriere, hvor det er relevant. Kalkylen har været at Trump aldrig ville kunne få sin vilje i det amerikanske system og oppositionen heller aldrig vil kunne forhindre ham i at få noget som helst, hvorfor der på et tidspunkt må indgås et kompromis uanset, hvor stejlt parterne har stillet sig overfor hinanden. Trumps position har længe været præsidentiel og han har tilbudt flere forlig, mens Demokraterne har sagt njet, njet, njet. Striden har blotlagt at Trump er den besindige statsmand overfor en opposition, der ikke har andet end nedgroede idiosynkrasier som slagnummer.

Trumps geni består ifølge Adams i, at han mere end nogen anden politiker har sat grænsekontrollen, som den altoverskyggende politiske dagsorden, hvor selv hans argeste modstandere konstant og ganske mod deres gode vilje er tvunget til at forholde sig til, hvad Trump, sammen med et flertal af amerikanerne, vil have. Så løsningen bliver, som den kun kan blive, afgjort af en sagkundskab i form af et udvalg. Det er også den republikanske senator Susan Collins mening ifølge Breitbart

“I think what will happen is the efforts to continue to build barriers, which have gone on in the last two administrations, will continue, but not to the degree that the president has requested. What we should do is ask the non-partisan experts and customs and border patrol, what are their biggest problems. It’s going to be a combination of physical barriers, technology, more border patrol agents, more immigration judges, more sensors. It’s got to be an all-of-the-above approach.”

Men, skriver Deroy Murdock, “The strongest proof that walls work is that Democrats once loved them.”

Former and current senators Joe Biden, Tom Carper, Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Debbie Stabenow, and Ron Wyden were among the 26 Democrats who voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. It authorized 700 miles of double fence. All 54 Senate Democrats voted unanimously in June 2013 for $46 billion in border security, including 350 miles of new steel fence.

“Between 2005 and 2015, polls show that nearly half of Democrats continued to support building a border barrier of some kind,” Cato Institute scholar Emily Ekins wrote in The Federalist. “However, things changed in 2015 when Donald Trump announced his bid for the presidency,” she continued. “Democratic support shifted more swiftly starting in the fall of 2015 onward. Now only about 12 percent of Democrats support a border wall or fence.”

Murdock tilskriver det ‘Trump-effekten’, at folk vil skifte et hvilket som helst standpunkt, hvis Trump mener det samme (Reuter/Ipsos found that simply telling Democrats Trump supports a policy turns them against it — even universal health care).

Kevin McCullough mener, at Demokraterne udstillede deres leflen for det yderste venstre og understregede at deres had til Trump er større end deres kærlighed til USA. Ifølge ham er det Trump, der fremstår præsidentiel og storsindet ved at give Demokraterne endnu en chance for at gøre det rigtige. Og vælgerne vil selv kunne afgøre om de foretrækker venstrefløjen USA, eller om de hellere vil beholde USA.

Det er vælgerne, ikke analytikere og medier, der afgør, hvem der vinder. Trump skal have noget murværk med til sin base, hvis ikke knap halvdelen skal forsage ham. Det er denne gulerod, som Demokraterne vil vinde, uanset, hvad det kommer til at koste den almindelige amerikaner. Og de satser på at Trump-affekten i en tilstrækkelig stor del af befolkningen vil se præsidentens forhandlingsvillighed som den urimelige position.