Donald Trump has a whole new problem
As the inquiry into Donald Trump’s treasonous behavior heats up and Republicans are gradually beginning to turn on him to save their own odds in 2020, there’s another bit of bad news that’s likely in the back of Trump’s mind whenever he melts down in public, something happening more and more frequently these days as he’s surrounded by scandals and being held accountable for the first time in his life at age 73.
It’s his border wall, or rather his non-existent border wall that was the centerpiece of his 2016 campaign, and is now being carried over into the 2020 election. He initially promised during his campaign that despite the fluctuation in how much this structure would actually cost, construction would begin during his first 100 days in office.
We’re now almost three years into his presidency and despite the constant shouts of “Finish the Wall!” and the regular doctored photos Trump likes to tweet to his followers, not a single mile of the wall has been built. Even though he said on Wednesday that massive portions of the wall were going up on the southern border, a new document provided to Newsweek by Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reveals that only 69 miles of the border fence were fitted with a new design – and if they move according to schedule, less than 509 miles of the wall will be finished before the end of 2020.
To put things in perspective, the border with Mexico is over 1,900 miles long. Building a wall has become synonymous with Trump’s candidacy – starting out as a mnemonic device to get him to focus on his speeches and also develop his brand – his reputation as a builder and negotiator – even though his plan to make Mexico pay for the wall fell flat on its face. Now, as his presidency and the Republican Party are falling apart, it seems only appropriate that his wall is being exposed for the fraud it always was.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making