Monthly Archives: February 2020

President Donald Trump has spent three years molding Americas immigration system to primarily be concerned with keeping people out.

He built, layer by layer, impediments in Central America, at the border, in detention centers, and in the immigration courts that have made obtaining asylum nearly impossible.

He swept aside former President Barack Obamas immigration enforcement priorities in favor of vastly expanding immigration detention and prosecuting every immigrant who crosses the border without authorization. The result is a punitive system that treats immigrants as criminals and places them in prolonged detention even if they dont pose any danger to the public.

And he waged a quiet and effective campaign to reduce legal immigration including expanding his travel ban to block immigration from Nigeria, the largest country in Africa. Under Trump, the legal immigration system increasingly rewards skills and wealth over family ties to the US, while shutting out a growing number of people from low-income countries.

When Trump laid out the start of his reelection-year argument in the State of the Union address on Tuesday night, his guests included a senior Border Patrol official and the brother of a man who was killed by an unauthorized immigrant. His immigration record was one of his top talking points.

He painted immigrants as criminals that pose a danger to public safety (overall, they dont) and railed against sanctuary cities that do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement authorities. And he touted his policies clamping down on unauthorized border crossers.

Before I came into office, if you showed up illegally on our southern border and were arrested, you were simply released and allowed into our country, never to be seen again, Trump said. My Administration has ended Catch-and-Release. If you come illegally, you will now be promptly removed.

Its true that Trump has run into some roadblocks: Hes behind schedule on construction of the southern border wall, a key messaging tool for his base. He hasnt been able to appoint his preferred candidates to lead the immigration agencies. His attempts to pass immigration-related legislation in Congress have failed. And his policies have faced so much opposition in the courts that his administration has appeared to pursue a strategy of rapidly churning out new policies and hoping that at least some of them survive judicial review.

But while he might not have succeeded at building an actual wall to keep immigrants out, his policies have achieved the same end. Reducing overall immigration levels has long been on the wish list of once-fringe restrictionist groups like the Center for Immigration Studies, whose co-founder advocated for maintaining a European-American majority population. Trump is making it a reality.

Trumps primary focus upon entering office was addressing the unprecedented number of children and families arriving at the southern border from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala collectively known as Central Americas Northern Triangle where crime, violence, and lack of economic opportunity has driven hundreds of thousands to flee over the past two years.

The administration hasnt addressed the root causes of that crisis, but it has effectively cut off migrants access to the US asylum system. His ability to do all this has even surprised Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

I didnt expect them to pull it off, he said. (Krikorian and his group are still pushing Trump to go further in his second term; his strategies have taken the edge off, but migrants are still continuing to arrive in unacceptably high numbers, he argues.)

Trump has deputized Central American countries in his immigration enforcement efforts. Some 60,000 asylum seekers have been sent back to Mexico to wait for their immigration court hearings in the US under his remain in Mexico policy, officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). It has appeared to discourage migrants from attempting to cross the southern border but has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in Mexico, where thousands are waiting for their court hearings in the US, many of them in dire need of humanitarian aid.

Some migrants are lucky to find housing in shelters, hotels, or rooms for rent, but for more than 5,000 others, only tents and tarps, some held up by only sticks and stones, stand between them and the elements, even as temperatures drop below freezing. As populations swell, both the US and Mexico have left thousands in the camps without basic necessities like clean drinking water and warm clothes and at risk of extortion, kidnapping, and rape at the hands of cartels and other criminal actors.

Trump has also brokered a series of agreements with the Northern Triangle countries that require migrants to apply for protections in those countries first. If they fail to do so, US immigration authorities can send them back to those countries (though only the agreement with Guatemala is currently in effect). So far, 368 asylum seekers have been deported to Guatemala.

The agreements resemble safe third-country agreements, a rarely used diplomatic tool that requires migrants to seek asylum in the countries they pass through by deeming those countries capable of offering them protection (though the Trump administration has been reluctant to use that term). Until recently, the US had this kind of agreement with just one country: Canada.

These agreements were never meant to be a means to push the burden of absorbing asylum seekers onto other countries, but that appears to be the way Trump is trying to use them. Immigrant advocates say the costs could be deadly, since it means returning migrants to countries that have high levels of crime and instability, and that are not used to dealing with an influx of people seeking refuge.

In Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries, migrants are commonly robbed, kidnapped for ransom, raped, tortured, and killed. The State Department, meanwhile, has issued travel warnings for US citizens in all four countries.

El Salvador has the highest homicide rate in the world, while Honduras ranks fifth, Guatemala 16th, and Mexico 19th, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. They have rampant government corruption and high rates of violence against women and LGBTQ individuals.

As much as Trumps rhetoric focuses on clamping down on unauthorized immigration at the southern border, the president has also instituted new restrictions on legal immigration many of which have survived Supreme Court review.

During his speech on Tuesday, Trump called for an immigration system that rewards immigrants who contribute to our economy, support themselves financially, and uphold our values while keeping out low-income immigrants and nonwhites from what he once referred to as shithole countries. Hes already bringing that vision to life.

Heeding calls from 31 states to end refugee admissions from Syria, Trump has slashed the total number of refugees the US accepts annually to just 18,000 this year, the fewest in history and down from a cap of 110,000 just two years ago.

His so-called public charge rule essentially establishes a wealth test for immigrants seeking to enter the US, extend their visa, or convert their temporary immigration status into a green card. The rule gives immigration officials much more leeway to turn away those who are likely to be a public charge based on an evaluation of 20 factors, ranging from the use of certain public benefits programs including food stamps, Section 8 housing vouchers, and Medicaid to English language proficiency.

Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said that 69 percent of the roughly 5.5 million people who were granted green cards over the past five years had at least one negative factor under the rule, which officials could have used as justification to reject their applications for immigration benefits.

Trump is also cracking down on foreigners giving birth to children in the US who become, by birth, American citizens, particularly if they cant prove they can pay for their medical treatment.

And hes placed restrictions on citizens of many Muslim-majority and African countries. His travel ban prevents citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, and North Korea from obtaining any kind of visa allowing them to enter the US. He recently added new restrictions on immigration from six additional countries Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania in what advocates are calling an African ban since about four in five of those affected are from African nations.

Trump has overcome court challenges to some of these policies: In four of the six cases in which the Supreme Court weighed in on Trumps immigration policies, the courts conservative majority has so far sided with the administration. Notably, the justices upheld his travel ban in June 2018, affirming his broad powers to restrict immigration to the US for national security reasons.

The justices have also allowed Trump to move forward with his immigration policy plans while lawsuits challenging them make their way through lower courts.

They gave the green light to Trumps rule preventing migrants from applying for asylum if they passed through another country other than their own before arriving in the US. They also allowed him to divert $3.6 billion in military funds to construct the border wall and implement the public charge rule.

The way Trump talks about immigration in his State of the Union address is likely to preview what he says on the campaign trail.

That might appeal to the 42 percent of voters who support his immigration policies. But 57 percent of voters disapprove of Trumps performance on immigration and 60 percent either oppose or strongly oppose the construction of the border wall, his signature immigration policy.

Not only are most voters against Trumps immigration policies, but many also just dont view it as a top priority bread-and-butter issues like health care and the economy are what they care about most. Fifty-one percent of voters overall said that immigration should be a top priority, ranking below eight other policy issues. Republicans seem to care more about immigration, with 68 percent saying it should be a top priority compared to 40 percent of Democrats.

The share of Americans who support increasing immigration has also risen to 32 percent as of 2018, up from 10 percent in 2001.

While Trump mobilizes his core supporters on the issue of immigration, he also mobilizes a backlash to his divisiveness and xenophobia, Frank Sharry, the executive director of the immigrant advocacy group Americas Voice, said.

Democratic candidates have largely ignored the topic of immigration in the debates so far, but based on the immigration plans theyve released, the entire field has moved to the left on immigration. All of the frontrunners would, for example, push for a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants living in the US and streamline the process of applying for asylum and other forms of legal immigration.

Their biggest challenge upon entering office, however, would be reversing Trumps changes to the immigration system. Much of it they could accomplish unilaterally by executive action they could end MPP and the travel ban and raise the cap on refugee admissions immediately, for example but some of Trumps changes are harder to reverse.

Repealing Trump-era immigration regulations would involve a protracted process of giving public notice and the opportunity to comment that often takes months. It may also take time to rebuild some of the institutions that deal with immigration. For example, Trump has presided over a brain drain of experienced staffers in the immigration courts and the State Department, which manages the refugee program and consulates abroad.

For as much as Democratic candidates claim they will reverse Trumps policies, the president has left his mark on the immigration system. He has delivered for his base on that front and hes hoping it will be enough to carry him to victory again in 2020.

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State of the Union: How Trump reshaped immigration - Vox.com

Scott Jennings, Opinion contributor Published 11:56 a.m. ET Feb. 3, 2020

DES MOINES, IowaFor a long time, I didnt understand this recurring image in my twitter feed Sesame Streets Elmo, a panicked look on his face and arms raised above his head while standing in front of a wall of flames. I guess because Elmo doesnt have eyelids he necessarily looks panicked all the time, but the inferno definitely adds to the vibe.

But now I get it.

When it became clear last week that Senate Republicans had heard enough and there would be no further witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump (further, because, despite what you heard, there were 18 witnesses and nearly 30,000 documents presented by the House managers), the panic among the Trump-obsessed began to manifest itself on social media, cable televisionand the floor of the U.S. Senate.

It was not pretty.

Trump is now functionally a king! The 2020 election is already stolen! Every future president will invite other countries to rig our elections! If John Bolton (who, amusingly, was one of the biggest boogeymen to the American left until he became their new hood ornament) isnt allowed to testify, then the Constitution is meaningless! Trump and his lawyers are like Stalin, Hitlerand Mussolini!

And so on and so forth.

Adult humans, many paid to help us find deeper meaning in our politics, morphed before our eyes into Inferno Elmo, arms up and ready to burn.

The Great American Impeachment Meltdown of 2020 followed the Great American Mueller Meltdown of 2019, which followed the Great American Kavanaugh Meltdown of 2018, which followed the Great American Inaugural Meltdown of 2017, which followed the Great American Election Meltdown of 2016.

Im not sure which puddle is deeper what I found on the streets of Des Moines during the Iowa Caucus as the snow gave way to unseasonably warm temperatures, or what the American Left has become after three years of Trumps presidency.

Pelosi: It was 'sad' for McConnell to 'humiliate' Chief Justice with witness vote

We live in the greatest country the world has ever known, with the most durable and genius governmental framework ever devised by man. Our economy is humming. We are blessed with work (there are more jobs available than people who want them). Our ancestors struggled against the Nazis; we struggle to choose which emotional support iguana to take on our next vacation.

For Americans looking to leap from the nearest tall building over Trumps acquittal, please back away from the ledge. There is absolutely nothing wrong with American democracy. In fact, it is pretty darn healthy.

In 2018, we had the highest voter turnout for a midterm election in 100 years. This Novembers presidential election turnout will likely top 65%, with millions of additional people participating over four years ago.

In other words, things are fine. They were fine. Nobody is stealing this election, and nobody stole the last one. We will pick the next American president right on schedule after a free, fairand vigorous contest. Trump will win. Or he wont. And the world keeps spinning no matter what.

Opinion: If McConnell wasn't in lockstep with Trump, there might be justice in the Senate

If you hate Trump, heres some advice: Stop worrying about Ukraine and instead worry that impeachment actually helped him. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found more Americans oppose Trumps removal (49% to 46%) than prefer it, and that the presidents political standing has strengthened in recent months, due largely to a more energized Republican Party base.

Trumps strongly approve number hit the highest mark of his presidency, he improved among independent voters, and gained ground against the leading Democratic candidates. The latest Associated Press national survey found that Democrats are nervous wrecks and Republican excitement has grown.

Essentially, impeachment was for people who already hated Trump while the rest of America either yawned or moved in his direction. Democrats setting their hair or Elmos fur on fire trying to beat Trump should rethink their strategy.

Conservatives and independents who were soft on Trump in 2016 tell me over and over that they still dont love the guys style but that Democratic antics during primary debates and the impeachment trial have driven them closer to the president than they ever thought possible. The people I know arent attracted to socialism or fatalism or perpetual outrage. They just want to live their lives, go to work, raise their kids and not be overly taxed, blamedor shamed for it.

And therein lies the strategic problem for Democrats. Acting like Inferno Elmo is simply incongruous with how most Americans feel about their country. And prescribing socialist solutions for a capitalist nation enjoying historic prosperity doesnt jibe with the mood of America, either.

Scott Jennings is a Republican adviser, CNN political contributor, and partner at RunSwitch Public Relations. He can be reached atScott@RunSwitchPR.comor on Twitter@ScottJenningsKY.

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Opinion: Thanks to their impeachment meltdown, Democrats have made Trump stronger - Courier Journal

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As comedian Tom Papa was building material for his latest stand-up special, he found himself reminding audiences, Youre doing great.

I got this feeling that people have an overwhelming sense of anxiety right now, Papa tells me on this weeks episode of The Last Laugh podcast. They feel like everythings going to hell and that in their personal life theyre not doing enough, theyre not as fabulous as people they see on social media, theyre not making enough money, theyre always up against it.

Thats why he chose to name his new special, which premieres on Netflix this week, Youre Doing Great!

Its an illusion that your life is shit, he adds. Thats not true. Youre actually doing pretty great. I decided Im going to be less cynical with my stand-up and convey what I really feel, which is more hope than malaise or unhappiness.

Like his longtime friend and mentor Jerry Seinfeld, who first put him on the map by making him his opener in the late 90s, Papa has never been a cynical comic, instead choosing to focus his comedy on observations about everyday family life. He may be just as outraged about Trump as the next guy, but unlike Americas political-minded late-night hosts, he doesnt find it that funny.

Life isnt perfect, he says from the stage. It never was and it never will be. Weve all got stuff to deal with. Youre doing great.

Highlights from our conversation are below and you can listen to the whole thing right now by subscribing to The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, the Himalaya app or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Ultimately, it is an escape. At my shows, youre not going to be hit with all this heavy political stuff. But if I was really good at it, Id probably be all in on it. My stuff is more about things that last over the lifetime of a human being, its not about the politics of the moment. There are people that are great at that and they should lean into it. I like reading about politics, but I dont find it that funny. I cant help at this moment [but] to watch Alec Baldwin come out dressed as Trump [on Saturday Night Live] and think, Youre really helping him more than what you think youre doing. And youre making this palatable.

I think why I was able to talk to him and become friends with him while he was coming back to do stand-up in the clubs in New York [after Seinfeld ended] was because I was hustling so hard that I wasnt watching TV. I wasnt watching the show. So I wasnt so in awe like everyone else was. He was the biggest star in the country at that time. I remember asking my girlfriend, should I be telling him that I like episodes? But I think he was relieved that I wasnt like, Hows Kramer? I wouldnt have stuck around if I was trying to ask that stuff.

It wasnt a big success. But I tend not to look at all of my failures as devastating. Ultimately I guess it is a failure because it should have been on for 10 years and it was on for like two. There were a lot of things wrong with the show. But I had no control. Part of what hurt was that the first year, it was Jerrys rolodex. So you had Larry David and Ricky Gervais and Madonna and all these crazy high-level people. It was cool, but it was complicated because it was Jerrys thing. We thought the show was going to be this little, quiet Sunday night family show. And now it is Seinfelds return to Thursday nights! During the Olympics! In the promos, they wouldnt even show me. Theyd just show my hands. It wasnt well-received in the first year. And that affected Jerry. And Jerry stepped away the second season, so it was kind of dead at that point. With Jerry not being behind it, [NBC] wasnt behind it.

I get a little sitcom called Come to Papa and it does really well in the pilot phase and everybody loves it. The president of NBC at the time, Jeff Zucker, leaves and Kevin Reilly takes over and hes not into our show. The show is just goofy and fun, me hanging with my friends, and he says, no, it should be a workplace and Im going to work at a newspaper all of a sudden. So they put Steve Carell in as my boss, because they have a deal with him. It was a try-out for The Office. As he was starting to film our thing, they were already making a deal with him to do The Office. And we had no idea. They were like, we have this property The Office or we have this Come to Papa thing and they had to choose and we got screwed. They had to kill us to free him to put him in that.

Next week on The Last Laugh podcast: Stand-up comedian Russell Peters, whose new special Deported is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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Comedian Tom Papa: There's Nothing 'Funny' About Donald Trump - The Daily Beast

The former Chief Strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns kicked off their discussion by telling Apatow how much he loves the mind of a comic, and Apatow quickly returned the compliment by getting into the humor of politics.

The movie producer revealed that after meeting former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett in 2010, he kept dreaming of writing jokes for the president at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner. At first, Apatow said, Lovett blew him off. But a year later, Apatow was called upon to contribute.

"When I worked at the Correspondents' Dinner and gave some jokes that were performed, I was just amazed at how good he [Obama] was at standup," Apatow recalled.

"Although Judd Apatow, you have to take some responsibility for the current events because you participated in maybe the most famous Obama White House Correspondents' Dinner routine ever, which was 2011," he said. "Donald Trump was sitting in the audience. I think I was two tables away from him and watched his face as these jokes landed."

Axelrod continued: "You couldn't help but do it [watch] because they were so brutal. But one particular joke was the president recounting some of the highlights of that season's 'Apprentice' in the context of, you know, leadership and, well played, sir."

Trump was also on the receiving end of some jokes the same evening by comedian Seth Meyers.

And that, Axelrod said in jest, is why Trump is president today.

"I've got enough guilt as a Jew," Apatow cracked back. "I don't need to be responsible for Trump."

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David Axelrod blames the brilliance of Judd Apatow's jokes for the Donald Trump presidency - CNN

From the black rural South we get this nugget of wisdom, most often expressed in song: Dont let the devil ride. Dont let the devil ride. If you let him ride, he gon wanna drive; dont let him ride. Subsequent verses provide additional warnings. If you let him flag you down, hell turn you around. If you let him be your boss, hell make your soul be lost. But they all make the same point: Theres no power-sharing agreement with the dark side. Once you welcome it, you become its subject, and it becomes your ruler.

When Donald Trump was running for president, there were quite a number of Republicans who correctly called out his unfitness for the office. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called the candidate a loser, a nut job and a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot who doesnt represent my party. When Trump, who was being sued for fraud, claimed that he couldnt possibly get a fair hearing from federal judge of Mexican descent, Paul Ryan, then speaker of the House, called the comment a textbook case of a racist comment. These are the words and phrases Sen. Ted Cruz used to describe Trump: pathological liar, utterly amoral, a narcissist at a level I dont think this countrys ever seen and a serial philanderer. Cruz also called Trump a bully.

All those Republican critics of Trump were spot-on. He is what they said he is. But all of those critics gave him their political support and cover. They all seemed to believe that if he were elected then they would be able to effectively restrain him and rein him in when necessary.

There were right-leaning pundits and columnist making similar arguments. Dont worry, they said to those of us horrified at the 2016 election results, the Republican establishment is merely tolerating this guy; theyll keep him in check.

But all weve seen are Republicans falling down before him like supplicants around a throne. All the senators present answered affirmatively when Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts asked them, Do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump, president of the United States, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help you god?" But most of them were lying. There was never any plan for the Republican members of the Senate to do anything other than acquit the president.

If you argue that it was always the plan for most Democrats to convict Trump, then youre right. The difference, though, is that an honest evaluation of the evidence supports Trumps conviction and removal from office. Entering the impeachment proceedings with a mind fixed on acquittal means deciding in advance that no evidence would matter.

Republican senators seem to be most concerned about what might happen to them at the polls if they were to oppose the president. But they ought to be most concerned about what will happen to this country if the person some of them have previously described as an amoral, lying, narcissistic nut job is rewarded and not punished for the lying, amorality and narcissism that led to his impeachment. Obviously, hes already emboldened, but the Senate endorsing his view that he did nothing wrong will only embolden him more.

On July 4, 2017, the first year of Trumps term, NPR published the Declaration of Independence line-by-line on Twitter. Theyd been broadcasting a reading of the document on air every year for 29 years, but when they also turned to social media to promote Americas founding document, Trump supporters accused the news outlet of Trump-bashing. Because who else could NPR have been referring to when it tweeted, A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people?

How does this country go from rejecting the monarchy and establishing a system to keep its chief executive in check to essentially establishing a monarchy by signaling a willingness to deny, look the other way or brazenly lie about the available evidence?

When we look back at it, well see that the first fatal step was believing that Trumps awfulness could co-exist with and be made subservient to the greater needs of the country. In short, that he would just climb aboard and be content to let other, less obnoxious leaders do the driving.

Instead, hes taken over everything. All the people in the White House who were supposed to be his minders are gone, and the two other branches that are supposed to check and balance his powers have all but waved the white flag of surrender.

The Trump-wont-be-that-bad crowd is awfully silent right now. One senses that they are shocked and disappointed at Republicans they believed would provide resistance.

But some of us arent shocked at all. We took the old folks warning to heart.

Jarvis DeBerry is a columnist at Cleveland.com and a member of the editorial board. Reach him at jdeberry@cleveland.com or on Twitter at @jarvisdeberry.

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Accommodating Donald Trump cost the GOP its soul - cleveland.com

WASHINGTONAs the beginning of primary season upped the stakes in their search for an alternative candidate, Democratic National Committee officials reportedly mulled Monday asking Donald Trump to run for president as a Democrat in an effort to stop Bernie Sanders. Hes obviously not our first choice, but Trump has a track record of winning elections, not to mention he does well with the conservative voters well need to swing some red states blueif thats who we need to ask to ensure Bernie doesnt win, well do it, said DNC chairman Tom Perez, who had circled Trumps name on a white board lising dozens of potential candidates the party could try to convince to jump into the Democratic Party primaries in order to obstruct a Sanders nomination. This late in the game, we need somebody with name recognition and a built-in following, which Trump definitely has. He has political experience working with Republicans, which will help him win over moderate voters who are turned off by the idea of a socialist president. Plus, hell have the backing of the Democratic donor base, who generally prefer him to Sanders. Look, sometimes politics makes strange bedfellows, but I think I speak for party leadership when I say that wed much rather see Donald Trump than Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee. At press time, Perez was in negotiations to ensure Trump was on every Democratic primary ballot for Super Tuesday and changing the requirements to allow Trump to qualify for the next Democratic debate.

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DNC Mulls Asking Donald Trump To Run As Democrat In Effort To Stop Sanders - The Onion

The libertarian-minded Massie has broken with Trump on an array of key issues, which McMurtry has highlighted repeatedly since launching his campaign earlier this month. But Massies new commercial aims to turn the tables on McMurtry, who is branding himself as a staunch Trump ally in lockstep with the president ahead of the May 19 primary.

Hes even worse than a Never Trumper. Todd McMurtry is a Trump hater, says the ad, which opens with a photograph of Massie and Trump flashing grins and thumbs-ups.

Massies commercial then highlights a handful of critical comments McMurtry made about Trump on Facebook, mostly in 2017, the first year of Trump's presidency.

Sad but true. Trump is the epitome of a weak male, said one McMurtry post, read in classic attack-ad fashion by the narrator.

Trump is an idiot, says another.

Hillary is right, McMurtry writes in another comment. He is temperamentally unqualified to be president.

Massies commercial concludes by tying his primary opponent to Hillary Clinton: Siding with Crooked Hillary. Thats Todd McMurtry, the Trump hater.

The race in Kentuckys deeply conservative 4th Congressional District, which spans the northernmost part of the state, underscores how GOP primaries are becoming litmus tests for fealty to Trump. Republican contests in areas from the Philadelphia suburbs to Fort Worth, Texas, are hinging on a simple factor: whether an incumbent House Republican has been sufficiently supportive of the president.

The significance of this test became clear during the 2018 primary season. Former Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) lost reelection to a challenger who highlighted his denunciations of the president. Two other Trump critics, Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, retired rather than face primary challenges from Trump-aligned opponents when their poll numbers sagged after blowups with Trump.

That has led a small group of Republicans, which now includes Massie, to go to great and unusual lengths to dissuade the president from endorsing a primary opponent. Alabama Rep. Martha Roby withdrew her support for Trump after the release of the lewd Access Hollywood tape just prior to the 2016 election, prompting a furious response from local Republicans. So once Trump took office, Roby became a frequent visitor at the White House in hopes of smoothing over her relationship with the president. At the time, Roby was trying to fend off a primary threat from a pro-Trump opponent. She won reelection in 2018 but is retiring in 2020.

Massies ad cuts into the main point of his opponents campaign. McMurtry, one of the attorneys who represented Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann in his defamation lawsuit against several media outlets, has pointed out that Massies voting record is less aligned with Trump less than any other member of the Kentucky congressional delegation, saying that Trump cant rely on our congressmans support.

Running in a district that Trump won by more than 35 percentage points, McMurtry has vowed there will be no daylight between him and the president. Earlier this month, he tweeted out a picture of the Trump Hotel in Washington.

Hoping to see my favorite President, McMurtry wrote.

Its not the first time a candidate has bought advertising time in South Florida hoping to get the presidents attention. Shortly after launching his Democratic presidential campaign last fall, former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg ran TV commercials in the area, coinciding with the presidents holiday travel to Mar-a-Lago.

And Massies campaign is making no secret of its intended audience.

We know the president will be in Florida this weekend, and we want him to know that our primary opponent has not been a supporter of his, said Massie campaign manager Jonathan Van Norman.

The Massie campaign is spending around $3,000 to air the commercial during Fox News programs this weekend in the West Palm Beach area, including Fox News Sunday. The spot is expected to air more than 50 times on Fox News over a 36-hour period.

The campaign will also spend $13,000 to run the ad on Fox News in Kentucky from Feb. 1 through Feb. 10.

The McMurtry campaign responded to the ad by pointing to several pieces of legislation and recent votes on which Massie broke with Trump, including a resolution aimed at curtailing the presidents ability to wage war with Iran.

Every time President Trump needs him, Massie stabs him in the back, McMurty campaign manager Jake Monssen said. It would be great if Thomas Massies problem was limited to old Facebook posts. Its not. His problem is his anti-Trump voting record in the House.

While Trump has endorsed several House Republicans who are trying to fight off primaries, aides to the president say he is unlikely to intervene in the Kentucky contest either for or against Massie. While they acknowledge Massie has sometimes opposed the president, they also note that he voted against impeachment in the House.

That has not kept Massie, who is facing the most serious reelection threat of his congressional career, from pursuing a presidential endorsement. Van Norman said the reelection campaign had been seeking Trumps support.

Certainly, Van Norman said, Congressman Massie would welcome an endorsement from President Trump in his race.

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The extreme measure one House Republican is taking to win over Donald Trump - POLITICO

A freshly installed section of President Trumps virtually impenetrable U.S. border wall got blown over by high winds on Wednesday, according to several reports, with local Mexicali officials scrambling to divert traffic.

Agent Carlos Pitones of the Customs and Border Protection sector told CNN that the sections that gave way had recently been set in a new concrete foundation in Calexico, California and that the concrete had not yet cured.

Heres some footage from the Guardian:

This comes a few months after Trump visited the wall near where this section fell and said, This wall is not something that can be really knocked down. Earlier this week, just one day before the gusty winds took their toll, Trump told a crowd in New Jersey that the wall was going up at record speed.

Of course, rivals and critics were quick to pounce, including presidential hopeful Tom Steyer, who used Trumps own words to lampoon him:

They were getting a kick out of it overseas, as well:

Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported the Trump administrations planning to move another $7.2 billion from the military to wall construction.

Excerpt from:

I build the best product! A section of Donald Trumps border wall gets blown over and his critics are loving it - MarketWatch