Cooper: Trump is doing what he said he'd do

President Donald Trump used the White House Rose Garden Friday to say he planned to declare a national emergency to help get a wall on the Southern border built.
President Donald Trump used the White House Rose Garden Friday to say he planned to declare a national emergency to help get a wall on the Southern border built.

Make no mistake about it. President Donald Trump believes a wall is needed on the country's Southern border. But what he needs more than that is for his supporters to believe he is doing everything he can to get the wall built.

It's the hole he put himself in when he ran for president. If he were president, he said, the United States would build the wall, and later added, Mexico would pay for it.

The country does need some sort of barrier - physical, electronic, Border Patrol or what have you - to keep its border with its Southern neighbor from the sieve it is currently. Every person who crosses that border without permission is breaking the law and becomes one more person the heavily indebted federal government must in some way support. It's a reprehensible tragedy, but a worse tragedy is the fact one U.S. political party - the Democratic Party - supports such lawlessness with all its being.

That brought Trump to where he was Friday - in the White House Rose Garden stating he was declaring a national emergency to help get the wall built. Mexico is not paying, so he planned to move about $8 billion in currently appropriated or available funds toward construction of the wall, $3 billion of which would come through the emergency declaration. That amount is in addition to the $1.4 billion Congress just afforded him for border security.

The president, himself, knew - and stated - that such a declaration would quickly wind up in the courts over its legality, eventually, in the Supreme Court. His foes, after all, are likely to go court-shopping and find lower courts with Obama appointees to rule against his emergency declaration.

Before Friday, Democrats pretended national emergencies were unprecedented - that it was an affront that Trump would suggest such a thing. To the contrary, 31 other national emergencies declared by five presidents are in effect, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. One, blocking Iranian government property, was implemented by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. Several have to do with transactions between the U.S. and other countries, and one declared by President Bill Clinton in 1995 deals with narcotics traffickers, the same people Trump wants to keep out with the wall.

We believe Congress should have appropriated more money for a Southern barrier. We likewise think a national emergency is not the best way to get the wall built and invites only litigation and significant time passing before anything is resolved. But we also know this is Trump showing his supporters he hasn't forgotten his promise and is doing his utmost to do what he said he would do.

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