One of President Trump’s main campaign promises was to “build the wall,” meaning a border wall with Mexico. He made it very clear this was a major condition of his campaign, and with that he said that he would make Mexico pay for the wall.

Now President Trump is saying that he never said that, and he only meant it “indirectly” according to recent statements:

The president said multiple times on the campaign trail that Mexico would pay for his border wall and gave the impression America’s Southern neighbor would be sending cash directly to the U.S. for it.

During his presidential announcement speech on June 16, 2015, Trump said, ‘I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall.’

And Trump’s campaign posted a document detailing how Mexico will pay for the wall.

Their plan was to propose a regulation that ‘no alien may wire money outside of the United States unless the alien first provides a document establishing his lawful presence in the United States’ – meaning any illegal from Mexico in the United States would not able to wire money back to that country.

If Mexico does not pay for the wall, the administration would put that regulation into affect: ‘Tell Mexico that if the Mexican government will contribute the funds needed to the United States to pay for the wall, the Trump Administration will not promulgate the final rule, and the regulation will not go into effect,’ the document says.

The plan also included thoughts on raising trade tariffs and canceling visas to push Mexico into coughing up the cash.

But, in recent days, Trump and his administration have been arguing Mexico will pay for the wall indirectly as they try to secure the $5 billion in funds needed to build it.

However, one Trump adviser admitted tax payers will bear the cost.

U.S. tax payers will pay directly for the wall, White House spokesperson Mercedes Schlapp said on CNN Wednesday.

‘Yes,’ Schlapp said when asked about taxpayers paying for the wall. ‘And you know what else taxpayers are paying for? The financial burden of this illegal immigration.’

There is nothing in the trade agreement that requires Mexico to pay for the wall. The administration is making a more nuanced argument that taxpayers and businesses will be saving money on goods and services that they will inject back into the U.S. economy.

The latest salvo comes on day 20 of a partial government shutdown and as both sides are at an impasse over reopening it.

Trump is holding firm for his $5.7 billion and Democrats aren’t budging from their $1.3 billion.

The president is leaving for the border to gin up support for his border barrier as Democrats vow not to fund his wall and he vowed not to sign any legislation to fund the government that doesn’t fund his wall.

The USMC trade agreement isn’t even legal yet. Although the three leaders of the U.S., Canada and Mexico signed the trade deal, the legislative bodies in each respective country must approve it before its binding. None of them have done so.

And there’s no direct line of revenue from the agreement to the U.S. Treasury. Tax revenue generated by the trade provisions would not come from Mexico but from U.S. tax payers and corporations.

A fact check by the Anneberg Public Policy Center found Trump’s claim of indirect payment by Mexico to be false.

Trump is taking the shutdown battle to the U.S.-Mexico border, seeking to bolster his case for the border wall after negotiations with Democrats blew up over his funding demands.

Trump stalked out of his meeting with congressional leaders – ‘I said bye-bye,’ he tweeted soon after – as efforts to end the partial government shutdown fell into deeper disarray. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers now face lost paychecks on Friday.

During his stop Thursday in McAllen, Texas, Trump will visit a border patrol station for a roundtable on immigration and border security and will get a security briefing on the border.

But Trump has expressed his own doubts that his appearance and remarks will change any minds, as he seeks $5.7 billion for the wall that has been his signature promise since his presidential campaign.

McAllen is located in the Rio Grande Valley, the busiest part of the border for illegal border crossings.

The unraveling talks prompted further speculation about whether Trump would declare a national emergency and try to authorize the wall on his own if Congress won’t approve the money he’s seeking.

‘I think we might work a deal, and if we don’t I might go that route,’ he said.

The White House meeting in the Situation Room ended after just 14 minutes. Democrats said they asked Trump to re-open the government but that he told them if he did they wouldn’t give him money for the wall. Republicans said Trump posed a direct question to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: If he opened the government, would she fund the wall? She said no.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Trump slammed his hand on the table. However, Republicans said Trump, who handed out candy at the start of the meeting, did not raise his voice and there was no table pounding.

One result was certain: The shutdown plunged into new territory with no endgame in sight. The Democrats see the idea of the long, impenetrable wall as ineffective and even immoral. Trump sees it as an absolute necessity to stop what he calls a crisis of illegal immigration, drug-smuggling and human trafficking at the border.

Trump headed to Capitol Hill earlier Wednesday, seeking to soothe jittery Republican lawmakers. He left a Republican lunch boasting of ‘a very, very unified party,’ but GOP senators have been publicly uneasy as the standoff ripples across the lives of Americans and interrupts the economy. (source, source)

For those who may be unsure, here is Trump’s plan for making Mexico pay taken from his own website:

This is not Trump changing his mind.

This is not Trump being attacked by the “deep state.”

This is not Trump doing anything different from what he has done before.

This is Trump showing his true intentions for what he always meant and said.

He never intended to “build the wall.”

He has no intention of stopping “illegal immigration” except in so far as it is used to advance the already established political mechanisms since World War II.

Most importantly, Trump does not give a single care whatsoever about the objective good of anybody in this nation except so much as it reinforces the image that he has marketed for decades, which is that of a “successful businessman” when his businesses overwhelmingly make their money from debt through bankrupting his investors or come from outside investments not tied to those which he presents to people to invest in.

This has nothing to do with Trump being a “Republican” or not, remembering that for most of his life he has been a Democrat.

This is Trump being caught lying just like what the Republicans rightly criticized Obama for doing. 

This is an illustration, par excellence, of the reason why national elections and politics for the most part today are irrelevant as far as the common people are and should be concerned, because they are just asked to be cheerleaders for a pre-set conclusion that even if they oppose it are still forced to conform to it in a mass social sense instead of taking the personal view that they can make a better decision for themselves and those around them.

The 2020 election cycle nonsense is starting soon, as it has been getting earlier with each campaign cycle. Yet while passions are incensed on both sides and people lose friendships, relationships, and even more over this nonsense, the fact is that none of these things actually matter as much as they are impressed on people that they should matter.

This is consistent with the theory and practice that while Democrats are open degenerates, the Republicans just hide the same degeneracy and try to make justifications for it later, and are thus “degenerate-lite”.

Both regular soda and “diet” soda are unhealthy, will make you fat and kill you because their essence is not good. Likewise, degeneracy and degeneracy-lite will only lead to frustration and anger because they are mutual paths to the same ends.

If a person wants to wrangle with others about politics, then local and in certain cases, regional politics on a state level is where one should go because that is an area where a difference actually can be made. One will likely never know the President or even one’s congressman, but one knows his local politician who lives a few blocks away, and may even know a somewhat more powerful local representative.

This is not to say that “border security” and the rights of the nation are irrelevant. It is to say that the reason the border is open, as it has been noted many times, is because of political reasons tied to agricultural policy.

It is true that many Central Americans and many other people come to the US, and the reason they are willing to risk doing this is because they want a better life for themselves because there is wealth in the US to be earned, as Americans, even those who are impoverished, are comparatively wealthy in comparison to the rest of the world.

Now it is always easier said than done, and there are many considerations, but for all those who would criticize those willing to risk their lives to cross the US border, would there be Americans who, using their wealth, would move to Central or South American nations, or even African ones, and in the model of the European colonists of old, use their comparatively greater wealth to seek their own fortunes overseas in nothing less than a modern colonization? Indeed, if one can say that “illegals” are “colonizing” the US, what is to stop American people, as individuals, from doing the same overseas?

I do not say this flippantly, but from a practical consideration. Indeed, there is much wealth to be earned, and any prospect will be dangerous and could end dangerously or in death, but the same is for those who try to come to the US.

Could perhaps the problem not be so much with the migration, but with the flaccidity and luxury that Americans are accustomed to that has lulled them into a sense of a false peace and vision of prosperity when in reality, prosperity has always and will always belong to the brave, the industrious, and those willing to be creative? The problem is not too many people, but the laziness, apathy, or willful ignorance of the people in a society that when faced with challenges and reasonable estimations of success, would rather adhere to the comfortable or easy instead of assuming more challenges.

If this is so, is America really a nation of free men? Or is it a nation of debt-slaves forced to work menial jobs for many and are enervated by the constant small debts and burdens that eventually crush a man’s finances and soul, as he feels he has no return for his work except the addition of more work in a cycle of misery that leads to burnout and apathy?

But returning to the issue of President Trump, there are so many who focus on “the wall” when Trump really has shown himself never to have possessed any intention ever to build it. Perhaps instead of arguing about politicians who don’t care and wasting one’s time, one could rather spend what precious time he has on a local level doing something that will make a real difference in his community, or for those who want to do something greater, to follow in the example of the very people crossing the US border, and seek one’s fortunes overseas, for in the words of the PBS children’s cartoon Peep and the Big Wide World, “It’s a big, wide world and it’s waiting for me and you.”

The theme song for Peep and the Big Wide World. This children’s song has a lesson for adults in it, and while the world is a dangerous place, it is also a place of adventure with fortunes to be won and lost and stories to be told.

Instead of waiting to be told what to do, Americans as individual people and small groups of family or very close associates may want to go out and seek for fortune and adventure just as the Europeans of old did, albeit in a modern context with a few different tools.