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“No matter how you put lipstick on this pig, [the wall] is still a campaign promise that he has failed to deliver because he lied about it,” said Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), who represents a border district.

When Pelosi says Democrats will never vote for “the wall,” she is not saying that Democrats will forever oppose funding physical barriers on the southern border. After all, between 2007 and 2015, Customs and Border Protection spent $2.3 billion building and maintaining 654 miles of physical barriers on the southern border, which Democrats supported, and Democrats have voted for funding as recently as 2018. As one top Democratic aide said, they would support physical barriers again, if it “makes sense.”

What Pelosi is saying is that Trump doesn’t get to shut down the government as a way to fulfill a campaign promise — especially one that carries the baggage of his anti-immigration platform. That’s where Trump and Republicans misunderstand Pelosi and Democrats’ position on the government shutdown and border wall fight. On Friday, Trump told reporters that Democrats can call the wall whatever they like, as long as they give him the money to build it.

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), a more conservative Democrat from a border district, has some sketches of physical barriers that he said would also serve as a flood deterrent and community space on the Rio Grande river in Laredo, Texas. He says it’s the kind of compromise Trump should be talking about.

But Cuellar wants to be clear: He continues to be staunchly opposed to “the wall,” calling it a fundamental misunderstanding of the needs of the southern border. In fact, all nine lawmakers who represent the nation’s southern border in the House, including Republican Rep. Will Hurd, have opposed every iteration of Trump’s border wall.

Almost all of them have supported physical barriers on the border in some form. But they say that can’t be the centerpiece of the proposal.

Trump has made “the wall” mean many things since entering office. On the 2016 campaign trail, it quite literally meant a 50-foot concrete wall along the 2,000-mile border. Over the past two years, the wall has become “see-through” and perhaps less contiguous (there are canyons and rivers, after all). In the past several months, Trump has called for “steel slats” or “concrete.” He doesn’t care what Democrats call the physical barrier. To Trump, it’s all a wall.

For Democrats, that’s the problem.

When Trump talks about physical barriers, he’s talking about a lot more than just the material that barrier is made of. Democrats are refusing to give Trump the political win.

“It’s a political gimmick, and we shouldn’t justify it,” said Rep. Peters. “The wall is more of a symbol instead of a structure. It is a symbol of racism. The message is still a racist dog whistle. It’s not a wall.”

Trump’s case for a border wall isn’t based in real data. Instead, he likes to remind people that he made a campaign promise to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it in 2016 and won.

Even when Trump tried to make a humanitarian appeal — citing the record number of children coming to the border and saying his plan includes an “urgent request for humanitarian assistance and medical support” — the wall he promised on the campaign trail was still the centerpiece of his proposal.