Donald Trump Defends Border Closure Option: Security ‘More Important’ than Trade

President Donald Trump on Tuesday acknowledged that closing the Southern border would negatively affect trade but said he is willing to do it anyway for security reasons. “Sure, it’s going to have a negative effect on the economy… but to me, trading is very important, the borders are very important, but security is what is most important,” he told reporters at the White House. “Let me just give you a little secret. Security is more important to me than trade. So we’re going to have a strong border or we’re going to have a closed border.”

The president commented on the possible action during a White House meeting with the Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg of NATO.

Trump urged Democrats to negotiate a deal to help fix the crisis on the border and demanded Mexico do more to stop migrants from approaching the United States border.

But he also demonstrated his willingness to close the border or large sections of the border, noting that there are many people urging him to do so.

“I’m totally prepared to do it,” Trump said. “We’re going to see what happens in the next few days.”

He berated Democrats for ignoring the crisis, calling the current system the “worst, dumbest immigration system in the world.”

Closing ports puts political pressure. It also frees up more CBP to deal with the “asylum seeker” mess all along the border.

I am very aware can’t close the whole border without a wall thank you. I live in the New Mexico bootheel where our border fence is a wire cattle fence only. I have illegals come to my home, watch high speed chases with smugglers- all that fun that goes with that. I have been dealing with border issues many years.

We need a wall, we also need Congress to change our asylum laws, and if Mexico allows illegals to enter to come here, they need to be stuck with them.

Excellent, though painful, point. Mea culpa.

It’s easy to bandy words around without understanding the full import of a situation. We’d like to think of the border traffic as all soft, but it isn’t. It’s pretty mean in parts.

I’ve been stressing the point of how God is ultimately needed to solve the problems we have, and that in recognition of His glory rather than as a prop for our own glory.

Just this past day I’ve been watching a speech that Ruth Padilla Deborst gave at Dallas Theological Seminary, “The Blessing Of Foolishness.” She asserts a number of the woes that are common topics of liberals, which in turn tempt a knee jerk response “Oh what a bunch of Marxist nonsense.” But what’s really been happening is that as the power of international church fellowship fades, secular answers step up to fill the gap — answers that put a political body in the place of God and therefore are subject to many corruptions and political venality. We can’t fix chauvinism problems that way — we just exchange an old chauvinism for a new one.

And until online “redneckhood” is actually prepared to act and considers and accepts all the implications including risk to their own fortunes and lives — it prevails only in a cartoon world.

We have a national guard to help address the kind of problems we are looking at here.

Also getting back to Ms. Deborst’s concern — the only long term answer to international woes resulting in unseemly intrusions on American soil is to get churches of all colors and mixes in all places united in standing up to institutionalized corruption and insisting on replacing it with faithfulness and truth. If Mexico is the source, we can’t wink and chuckle at their “la mordida,” macho culture, drug and gun running, and other such things. If cracking down on the border is the start of the address of these issues, it is. But it can’t be the finish.

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