BORDER/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WALL: “Something has changed. President Donald Trump’s headline-hungry governing style has never lacked for drama, but there’s a new sense of aimlessness lately in Trump’s frenetic search for a crisis, his efforts to control the headlines, distract from other events, and keep his base satisfied that he is the muscular fighter who will stop at nothing to achieve his goals. In reality, the Trump administration is a vortex of incoherence. In the final weeks of 2018, Trump suddenly revived his promise to build a wall with all the concentrated determination of a man fleeing a posse. The promise was never quite dead (the second stanza of the ‘Build the Wall’ campaign chant, the part about Mexico paying, has faded, drowned by the debunking of nonsensical claims) but two years into the Trump administration, the urgency of building a wall exploded onto the scene only after tangible threats to Trump looked imminent.”
–Frida Ghitis, “Trump is creating a ‘crisis’ to distract from the real crisis of a flailing president,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, January 10, 2019 9:25 pm