The Grand Ballroom at Mar-a-Lago is fit for a sovereign. Rows of chandeliers hang beneath the ornate ceiling of a room, washed with gold and crystal, that would put a smile on the face of the Sun King. I was there the night Donald Trump took the stage, flanked by American flags and shimmering cream curtains, to announce his intent to capture the White House again in 2024.
The gilded room was packed with a crowd whose thunderous cheers and applause frequently interrupted Trump’s unusually sedate and somber rhetoric. But then he mentioned his signature promise to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. “We built the wall,” he said, “we built the wall. We completed the wall, and then we said, ‘let’s do more,’ and we did a lot more.” It was a rare moment that evening where a boast by Trump did not elicit applause, but only a strange silence. Because in truth, Trump’s wall was unfinished when Joe Biden entered the Oval Office and issued an executive order to immediately halt its construction.