The Trump wall has never been anything more than a symbolic totem for the rubes — a rhetorical us-vs.-them concept, and a line-in-the-sand presentation thqt President Trump would like to put on to the tune of $5 billion, solely for the emotional benefit of his information-challenged base. Trump threw it out during the ’16 election, of course, and has continued to hail the wall in subsequent hillbilly Nuremberg rallies.

Sen. Chuck Schumer: “The President made clear that he wants a shutdown. If he sticks to his position for a $5 billion wall, he will get no wall and he will get a shutdown. We want border security, we offered high border security, but Americans know that the wall is not the way to border security, and the experts say that. This Trump shutdown, this temper tantrum that he seems to throw, will not get him his wall. The $1.3 billion that we gave him last year for border security — no wall but border security…less than 6% of [this amount] has been spent.”