Conservative shreds Trump's plan to use bizarre gimmick to build wall

A writer for the conservative National Review magazine has shredded Donald Trump's claim that he can use "the military version of eminent domain" to build his border wall with Mexico.

Writer Jonah Goldberg wrote Monday that "it’s a crazy idea" to try to use such a show of force to build a border wall with Mexico -- for anyone except Trump.

If the move were to emerge unscathed from both Congress and the Supreme Court -- an unlikely scenario, Goldberg wrote -- it would make the president even more of a liability for elected Republicans.

"Would you like to run for office defending hourly images of armed U.S. troops kicking in doors or rolling out concertina wire?" the conservative columnist wrote. "Is it beyond imagining that at least one Texas or Arizona rancher would get shot defending his property?"

Goldberg noted that one theory in Washington posits that the White House (though maybe not Trump) recognizes that such an executive order "would be blocked almost immediately until the courts could deal with the blizzard of lawsuits that would instantly result."

That outcome, the columnist added, would allow Trump to claim he did his best to "protect the border" but was again thwarted by "the establishment" or the "Deep State."

"That might indeed be good for Trump," Goldberg wrote. "I just don’t see who else it would be good for."