U.S. Troops to Spend a Month Painting Border Wall

This is an absolutely shameful utilization of our military. Coming on the heels of the story about the USS John McCain, Trump is once again illustrating his lack of respect for our men and women in uniform, this time by having them engage in degrading busy work that serves no practical purpose and is solely intended to make an ugly political proposal more palatable. If you believe painting a wall is a legitimate task for our troops, you are no patriot.

Increased military presence along the southern border, whether our troops are being ordered to paint walls or herd immigrant children into cages, is not what we need to fix our ineffective immigration system. Undocumented immigrants do pose a threat to our economy, and it is a huge problem, but it’s one that needs to be solved with enforceable, effective policy—not by military action. As I wrote last week, it seems clear that this administration has no moral qualm with using our military as a political tool to rile up support from their base, and the American people (on both sides of the aisle) need to do a better job of calling out our leaders and demanding more respect for our military personnel.