Another brick in the wall(s)

In his first stab at the presidency, DJT’s rallying cry was “Build the Wall”, and it was an effective campaign to stoke fear of “other” people. The man who would later become the 45^th president convinced people that America was overrun with drug lords and rapists with calves the size of cantaloupes. He repeated this lie enough to win the Electoral College (but lose the popular vote) in the 2016 election.

And he did attempt to build the wall that he promised. I saw a stretch of it on the Arizona/Mexico border. The way then-President 45 made it sound, I expected thick concrete slabs and barbed wire lacing the top, but instead it was constructed of metal slats that sometimes fell over.

What was supposed to be impenetrable was penetrable in many places. The enterprise lost steam when president-whisperer Steve Bannon was indicted for fiscal malfeasance related to the wall in 2022.

It’s safe to say that most Americans have forgotten about the wall and the rallying cry that drove it. The re-president isn’t crowing about this massive accomplishment from eight years ago, either. He, too, seems to have forgotten about it.

Instead, he’s turned his attention to building walls closer to home.

You may recall that the president decided to append his name above the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In 1964 Congress voted to name the center in honor of the slain president. President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill.

Our current president sought no such approval when he strong-armed the Kennedy Center’s board into tacking his moniker above the official name. He put up a tarp wall while the facelift—I mean, the defacement—was being done. When directed by lawyers in June to remove the unlawful addition, the tarp wall was reinstalled, where it continues to stand.

The administration says that the edifice suffered damage and it’s too unsightly for the public to see. What public? Attendance has plummeted; acts have been cancelled. Throngs are not thronging to the Kennedy Center.

No, this is an act of defiance, and what is such behavior when you get down to it, but an act of will that’s just another kind of wall.

It’s not a ballroom. It’s a wallroom.

Turning now to the White House, on Saturday, October 18, 2025, a national No Kings rally turned out an estimated 7 million people. The president responded with a cartoon of himself flying over crowds while dumping excrement on them.

Two days later, in a further fit of pique he ordered the East Wing to be razed, and he announced that a grand ballroom would be built in its place.

Later he said the project wasn’t so much about the ballroom as it was for the bunker underneath, but there had already been a bunker under the East Wing. So, a super-duper bunker was in order. Bunkers, of course, are meant for civil and military protection and to wall off troops from the enemy.

Who, I ask, is the enemy? The president doesn’t see the White House as the peoples’ house. He never has. He sees it as a sitting duck for terrorism, which he claims is streaming across the border, but it’s also anyone who makes him feel threatened: reporters, members of Congress who won’t bend the knee, and even comedians.

He’s been talking about making the ballroom drone-proof and sniper-proof, which is to say, making it impervious to attack, which is to say, he wants to wall off the place.

When a square becomes a pen

The latest foray into fortress-making is the plan to build a wall around Lafayette Park, which sits north of the White House. This park has been a historic site for protest. This is where women gathered over 100 years ago to agitate for the right to vote.

Other protests in this space have included civil rights protests in the 1960s, anti-Vietnam war resistance in the 1970s, cries for nuclear disarmament in the 1980s, and protests for LBGT rights in the 1980s and 1990s, and racial protests in 2020.

No one likes criticism, but if you’re president, it’s a big part of the job, and we, the people, are free to dissent. This country was forged in protest.

Of course, the public isn’t being given information about plans for the wall or who will pay for it. According to reports, it will serve as a barrier between the White House and the square, but when the gates to this fenced wall are shut, it creates an enclosure, aka a pen.

Why would protesters need to be corralled?

Marty Pearl, a citizen who regularly protests in Lafayette Square said that “what dictators do is isolate themselves from the people they rule. That is not, for me, the way democracies can possibly work.”

One more before I go

The president is running scared about the mid-terms. His speech on July 16 didn’t whip up the frenzy he intended. He’s been trying to build a wall of election fraud since he lost in 2020, but baseless claims make a poor foundation on which to build anything real or sustained. He’s tried. Oh, how he’s tried, but the artifice is crumbling.

When he tries to blame immigrants, we push back. When he tries to justify building a fortress so that he can never leave power, we push back. When he tries to silence protest, we push back. When he cries foul about the 2020 election, we push back.

While he continues to peddle division, to enrich himself at our expense, we push back, as exhausting as it is. Keep pushing.