BORDER/DEMS/IMMIGRATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WALL: “Donald Trump isn’t sure The Wall exists. At various times, he has said that much of it has ‘already been built’—not true. He’s said that Mexico is already paying for it, through a trade deal that has yet to be ratified—also not true, and flat-out impossible, at that. Nevertheless, the president has provoked a partial government shutdown to demand Democrats cough up funding for a thing that, according to the latest in the New York Times, was invented as a mnemonic device to keep him focused during the 2016 campaign. The Wall exists, and yet it doesn’t. Philosophers and college burnouts have wrestled with precisely these sorts of existential dualities for generations…This isn’t the first time in modern history that philosophy has become a better interpretative guide to the presidency than, say, the Washington Post editorial pages…But with The Wall fight, Trump has taken existential questions into the Oval Office with new abandon.”
–Derek Robertson, “Trump’s Metaphysical Wall: An Investigation, ” Politico, January 8, 2019