If any constitutional scholars breathed a sigh of relief that Donald Trump did not declare a national emergency on Tuesday night, they exhaled too soon. During a press conference on Wednesday, as he signed legislation to combat human trafficking, the president insisted, once again, that he has “the absolute right” to direct the military to build a border wall if he doesn’t get his way in Congress. Such an inappropriate use of executive authority would almost certainly provoke a lawsuit, which legal experts suggest could be a losing proposition. Nevertheless, Trump continues to weaken his own prospective case. Asked by a reporter what would be the threshold to declare a national emergency, Trump responded, “My threshold will be if I can’t make a deal with people that are unreasonable.” Not getting his way, in other words, would constitute a crisis.

The federal government has been shut down for 19 days, and the grave consequences, reportedly unforeseen by the administration, are now making headlines: 38 million Americans who rely on food stamps could soon see their SNAP benefits frozen, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development may be forced to evict millions of tenants due to a lack of funding. But Trump, who said last week that he would keep the government closed for “months or even years” until he gets his wall money, explained on Wednesday that he had good reasons for doing so. For one, the “unbelievable vehicles” that Mexicans are driving into the United States.

“If we don’t have barriers, walls—call them what you want—but if we don’t have very strong barriers, where people can not any longer drive right across—they have unbelievable vehicles; they make a lot of money,” the president informed perplexed journalists in the Oval Office. “They have the best vehicles you can buy. They have stronger, bigger, and faster vehicles than our police have, and than ICE has, and than Border Patrol has. So they’re pretty good at that . . . ”

Could people drive cars across the border if there was a wall? Well, yes, that’s what they’re doing now. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, “Mexican criminal organizations move most of their illegal goods over the Southwest border through ports of entry in passenger vehicles or tractor trailers.” In recent months, U.S. Customs and Border Protection estimates that 63 percent of the criminals it encountered came through airports or other ports of entry. But Trump believes the wall will be 99.9 percent successful. Why? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu allegedly told him so.

“Israel put up a wall—99.9 percent successful, according to Bibi Netanyahu. He came into my office a couple of months ago,” Trump said. “He said, ‘What’s with the wall? We put up a wall. It was 99.9 percent successful’—99.9. I said, ‘Do you mind if I used that number?’ Because they’ll fact-check it, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, it was actually only 99 percent; the president told a fib.’ Now, well, he told me 99.9. Maybe he’ll change it and make it 99. But they put up a wall, and they don’t have a problem anymore. And we have to do the same thing.”

After expending these more dubious justifications for a wall, Trump revealed his true intentions for digging in. “If I did something that was foolish, like gave up on border security, the first ones that would hit me are my senators,” he insisted. “The second ones would be the House. And the third ones would be, frankly, my base.”

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