The wall may be metaphorical, but it's no less impenetrable. And the republicans have already built it...around Donald John Trump. Mexico isn't paying for it—we are. All of us. And the cost is staggering.
It should come as no great shock that just about anyone who works for, spends time with, or simply observes the daily circus/dumpster fire that is the Trump presidency, knows the “president” is a hapless, ignorant buffoon. His own Secretary of State dubbed him a “fucking moron,” and that actually seems pretty generous. Yet, from Paul Ryan, to Mitch McConnell, to Devin Nunes, to the rank and file of the GOP, to the massive structural fortress of right wing media, republicans have been pouring cement and laying brick all around this incompetent, senile narcissist since he lied his way through his oath of office.
Trump called Nazis “very fine people.” He admitted to serial sexual assault on tape. He maligned war heroes and gold star families and federal judges. He doesn’t read his classified daily briefings because he doesn’t read at all. He eschews the CIA, NSA, FBI and DHS, preferring to receive his daily intelligence from Fox and Friends. He wiped his elephantine ass with the emoluments clause and the Logan Act without pause or care. He picks daily fights on Twitter with, seemingly, anyone black, from Oprah, to Barack Obama, to Whoopi Goldberg, to LaVar Ball, to Colin Kaepernick, to Don Lemon (brevity and carpel tunnel prevent me from listing them all), to admitting to obstruction of justice in a nationally televised interview with Lester Holt, to banging a porn star while his wife was nursing their new baby, to paying $130,000 to cover the affair up, to a complete and total abdication of leadership in failing to respond to an act of cyber warfare perpetrated by an enemy foreign state. The list is incomprehensible.
Yet republicans still defend him. Vehemently and in lockstep. This is the same group of plucky patriots that lost their collective shit when Obama wore a tan suit to work.
In retrospect, that tan suit episode was instructive, and hints at exactly why the wall has been erected around Trump. And why it’s likely that even special counsel Robert Mueller may not be able to tear it down regardless of what he can prove. For the republican party, this is an existential battle. And they know it. And it's all about race.
For decades, the GOP, with its frightening fringe of neo-Nazis, KKKers, neo-confederates, and “alt righters,” has always played footsie with America’s white supremacist underbelly. But, at least politically, they preferred to play in the dark corners of innuendo and dog whistles rather than in the light of day. Then along comes Trump, with the subtlety of a rhino humping a minivan, throwing so much blinding light onto the republican party’s systemic racism, and thriving in it rather than being stomped out because of it. He launched the entire GOP across the racial animosity rubicon as if it had been fired out of a cannon.
The grim post-Trump realization is that these far right groups, and the individuals that sympathize with them, are no longer “the fringe.” They are now the true, recognized GOP base. And Trump’s political ascension has lit a fire under them. As such, politicians like Paul Ryan may continue to fashion themselves as conservative policy wonks and deep thinkers, but what they all know now beyond a shadow of doubt is they can no longer win elections without courting the dense center of their white, racially disaffected, and increasingly emboldened base.
The republican party can no longer win national elections without motivating and animating America’s most virulent racists, along with the scores of similarly minded citizens who don’t necessarily love the KKK, but nod along in private when they hear David Duke being interviewed about keeping "America first." Disavowing Trump at this point is to disavow the GOP base across huge voting blocs, so whether Mitch McConnell shares those same racially charged values or not, he sure as shit isn’t about to commit political suicide by fucking with the Trumpers. Nobody in the republican party is.
Every day the GOP chooses to do nothing about the national embarrassment now residing in the White House, the taller and stronger the wall surrounding Trump becomes. And we are not paying the cost in dollars, or pesos, but with the death of our democracy.