Sicilianthing

Fact check: Trump say his border wall is under construction. It's not.
At a recent rally, Trump said supporters should chant "continue building that wall!" But in the past year, the government has only replaced existing fence.
by Jane C. Timm / Jul.03.2018

Trump tours U.S.-Mexico border wall prototypes
President Donald Trump tours U.S.-Mexico border wall prototypes on March 13, 2018, in San Diego.Evan Vucci / AP file
When the crowd at President Donald Trump's South Carolina campaign rally last week started up the now-familiar chant of "Build that wall, build that wall," he stopped to chastise them.

“It's not 'build that wall' anymore, it's, 'Continue building that wall,'" he said. "Because we're building it."

He repeated this claim a day later at the White House.

"We’ve started the wall," Trump said. "Started up in San Diego and other places. It's under construction with $1.6 billion dollars, but we’re going to ask for an increase in wall spending so we can finish it quicker."

But that's not true. While some new fencing has been built along the U.S.-Mexico border in the past year, it's not the concrete barrier Trump vowed because of the strings Congress put on the cash.

THE FACTS

The president rooted his campaign and early presidency in the idea that the southern border needed a concrete wall to secure American borders, which he said was overrun by crime and drugs. He said over and over that Mexico would pay for it. (Mexico has so far refused.)

"There's a BIG difference" between a wall and a fence, he tweeted in 2015.

"It's not a fence, it's a wall," he said days before his inauguration.

"A properly built, constructed, designed wall. High, not a little fence they had," he told Fox News' Sean Hannity in 2017.

Trump ordered eight prototypes for his wall built in the desert outside San Diego. He toured them in March, declaring the prototypes superior to existing fencing.

"That wall, they can get over very easily," Trump told reporters, pointing to existing fencing that had been patched from attempts to break through them. “These walls,” he said, indicating his prototypes, “they can’t.”

The same month, legislators passed a spending bill that included $1.6 billion in border barrier funding. That's the money Trump has touted at recent rallies as a "down payment" on his wall. But by law, the money can only be used for the construction or repair of existing fencing designs.

That funding "shall only be available for operationally effective designs deployed as of the date of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017 ... such as the currently deployed steel bollard designs," the bill reads, referencing designs that were completed well before Trump's prototypes were built.

A spokesman for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said that more than seven miles of border fencing had been replaced in the past year. (The president has said the U.S. needs 700 miles of new barrier on the border, and has sought $25 billion for his wall.)

Additionally, a spokesman for CBP told NBC News that the findings from prototype development and testing had been presented to leadership, but it was unclear when — or if — they would be deployed in future border barrier construction.

Trump has maintained that he still intends to make Mexico pay for the wall — in one rally he teased that that issue might come up in NAFTA negotiations — but has yet to offer any specifics.

The new president-elect of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, seems unlikely to offer fresh aid on that front. He has denounced Trump's plan to build a border wall and his latest book was titled, "Listen, Trump!"

Bad Bob Loc: Virginia

Sic did the swamp get drained?

Sicilianthing

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Nope sadly... and no one has been arrested yet either...

Bad Bob Loc: Virginia

Just trump people?

Sicilianthing

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I guess... and Tomorrow my first prediction comes true...

No arrests by July 4th

The next prediction date is Oct 1 and there will be no arrests

And then Dec 31st, finishing the year with no arrests and the Beat Goes ON
No Wall
No Swamp Drain
No Nothing !

Bad Bob Loc: Virginia

No Obamacare repeal? But we got trump's taxes cut.

kemmer

If Cohen flips, like he's expected to, Trump himself could conceivably not make it to the November midterms.

Sicilianthing

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I know

Sicilianthing

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That would be seriously scary but I doubt that would happen, worse is the uncertainty that’s brewing in D.C. and this whole investigation...

Can Trump pardon himself for what ?

kemmer

Pence would certainly be no consolation prize, that’s for sure. He ran Indiana like a church, a particularly h**eful one.

Sicilianthing

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IDK, I think we’re in for serious troubled waters coming, worse than what we’re already in...

kemmer

Things will settle down after Trump has been booted.

Sicilianthing

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I don’t believe any of that...
things will return to normal and Greatness when the Muslims are gone from our land and the 22million illegal scumbags are deported and we have a massive Wall and Military rotation at the border for the next 500years...

How’s that sound ?

kemmer

You and Stalin would get on very well together.

Sicilianthing

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All you need to know is this:

The Multicultural experiment has failed and America is closing it’s doors for repairs.