Everything old is new again.
While a congressional conference committee makes a futile effort to produce border security legislation that can pass through both chambers of Congress and satisfy Trump, Trump is preparing for another photo op on the southern border.
White House aides who spoke to USA Today off the record say Trump is planning to spend the next several weeks talking about his fantasy border wall and that includes another trip to the border.
As the clock ticks toward a Feb. 15 deadline to fund the government, White House plans include events designed to highlight immigration woes and, aides said, potentially another visit by the president to the U.S.-Mexico border. The aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions, stressed no final decisions about strategy had been made.
White House officials are developing their game plan as a bipartisan committee of 17 lawmakers meets for the first time Wednesday to begin talks aimed at avoiding another shutdown and addressing Trump’s request for billions in border security money.
In what I don't believe is a coincidence, the New York Times reported last night that another wave of active duty services members are headed south where they will dutifully observe tumble weeds as they blow across the border.
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is poised to send at least 2,000 more active-duty troops to the southwestern border, Defense Department officials said Tuesday, deployments that have already cost the military hundreds of millions of dollars and thrust the department into the center of the debate over border security and President Trump’s proposed wall. [...]
That would come on top of the 2,400 troops who are there now, bringing the deployed number at the border close to the high of 5,900 that it reached in the weeks surrounding the midterm elections in November.
The last time this many troops were deployed to the border, they were asked to deploy barbed wire.
Several weeks later, they were asked to remove the barbed wire they deployed.