Covering for the boss, yet again.

Pundits have been wondering whether Donald Trump would be visiting the troops he sent to the southern border as an election-eve publicity stunt. The answer appears to be no—he's going to keep pouting in his room. So he sent Defense Secretary James Mattis instead.

It's going swimmingly. You can tell everybody involved is feeling super invested in this mission.

x En route to US-Mexico border, Defense Sec. Mattis says the "Operation Faithful Patriot" moniker was dropped because he did not want to put the mission Ã¢ÂÂin some arcane military terms if what we are doing is laying wire.Ã¢ÂÂ — MSNBC (@MSNBC) November 14, 2018

x Mattis, at Base Camp Donna, is asked by a soldier whether they'll have to remove the concertina wire at the border that they're emplacing. He doesn't answer directly, says "we'll let you know." — Dan Lamothe (@DanLamothe) November 14, 2018

Rumor has it that Trump didn't want to visit the border with Homeland Security Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen because he now hates her and wants her fired, but hasn't had the guts to do it yet. So, like everything else surrounding this Veterans Day, he blew it off.

As for the supreme money-wasting idiocy of ordering the U.S. military to the Mexico border to lay spools of razor wire lest that refugee kid wearing the Disney t-shirt or the one cradling her pet iguana overwhelm our national defenses, don't worry about that either. Outgoing Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake called the whole thing a "stunt" so we can presume that, as his outgoing act, he will do a vague something about that.