In a highly anticipated address to the nation on Tuesday night, President Donald Trump will go live from the oval office in an attempt to garner national support for his border wall idea.
While pundits have debated the purpose and structure of the border wall, New York Times opinion columnist Frank Bruni said that Trump never really cared about the actual wall.
He explained that Trump only cares about "winning" even if that means putting millions of Americans at risk through a government shutdown.
"It’s not really a wall that Trump is after if indeed it ever was. It’s a victory for victory’s sake. It’s a show of his might. It’s proof of his potency," Bruni said.
He added, "Even this deep into a presidency of such incompetence and amorality, he deserves a hearing; that’s how the rest of us demonstrate the very respect for traditions and norms that he refuses to show. But he doesn’t deserve an unfiltered one. That’s the road to autocracy."
Trump's speech is supposed to be just a short eight minutes, and he might declare the border a national emergency.
"Trump isn’t selling something that the country really needs, and that’s why he and his allies have to lard the pitch with lies," he said.
Bruni explained the real reasons behind Trump's wall.
"It’s a function of, more than anything, his ego, his vanity, to which the television networks, furloughed federal workers — all Americans — are hostages," he said.
"A robust measure of arrogance and some degree of neediness are what make the grind of the campaign trail and the glare of the media bearable," he wrote.
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