By Donald Trump loves walls. That's a given. That's why the American federal government's been kicking its heels for the last three weeks. They're a good match. DT 4 walls IDST.
That wasn't always the case, though. A video of Trump addressing Wagner College in Staten Island on 21 May 2004 has resurfaced thanks to the Daily Show in which Trump gives some very heartfelt advice about pummelling your way through walls that stand in your way, whether metaphorical or at the centre of a funding row which is forcing government employees to miss paycheques.
"I’ll tell you, to me, the second-most important thing after love what you do is never, ever give up," Trump told assembled graduates. "Don't give up. Don't allow it to happen. If there's a concrete wall in front of you, go through it, go over it, go around it. But get to the other side of that wall."
The rest of that speech is an absolute doozy, by the way, filled with non sequiturs. "I’ve always wanted to be known as a doctor," Trump muses at one point. "I'm a star, and there's nothing like it. It beats real estate all the time," he beams at another.
There are some big messages within the speech though. "Don’t lose discipline," Trump advises. "And don’t live on the edge like I do. You don’t need it. You want to have a nice, normal life folks, okay?"
Some of his other pointers are pretty boilerplate - "if you don't love it, don't do it", "give 100 percent" - but the explanation behind his advice to "review yourself every day" sounds like the tumbling internal monologue of a giddy dog: "How am I doing? What am I doing? Am I enjoying it? Am I doing it well? Do my bosses like me? What's going on?"
