OPINION:
President Donald Trump delivered a winner of a border speech to the American public, uncommonly scripted to the end as it was — and the Democrats, in return, in response, sadly sank to their usual low levels of partisan jibbing and political jabbing.
It’s all a “manufactured crisis,” is how Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described Trump’s border wall in televised remarks after the president’s speech.
“The symbol of America should be the Statue of Liberty, not a 30-foot wall,” he went on, after pulling out the old “temper tantrum” phrase the Democrats so like to affix to this president whenever he takes a strong stand for the American people.
It’s funny that Schumer referenced the Statue of Liberty; the monument does indeed represent a welcoming sign to the world’s tired and poor, those yearning for freedom and so forth and so on. But it also represents a gate guard for this nation. Those coming to America could gaze at the monument and dream of their visions in this new world — at the same time they were undergoing strict document and medical checks at nearby Ellis Island, a hop, skip and jump across the bay.
Republicans only want those same old-timey-type Ellis Island standards at the nation’s southern borders.
Conservatives only want the unchecked individuals flowing into the United States at points south to have to go through the same processes that were once so socially, culturally and politically accepted in the north — in Schumer’s own state. As Schumer’s own reference to the Statue of Liberty — unwittingly, no doubt — invoked.
Or, as Trump put it in his speech: Let’s all band together and stop the “criminal gangs, drug smugglers and human traffickers” who are taking advantage of Democratic-backed open borders.
“It’s this cycle of human suffering I am determined to end,” Trump said, speaking of the women who are raped and the children who are trafficked with regularity at the U.S.-Mexcian border.
Trump also knocked the elephant in the room.
Speaking of the left’s recent chants about the immorality of a border wall, he said: “Then why do wealthy politicians build fences and walls around their homes? They don’t hate the people on the outside. They love the people on the inside.”
Exactly.
Democrats, thy name is hypocrisy.
If only the left would allow the American people what they themselves have, the border wall issue wouldn’t be an issue at all. It would already be built.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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