Trump can’t stop himself from tweeting about his WALL (in capital letters), here’s his latest, pushed out 28 March:
Great briefing this afternoon on the start of our Southern Border WALL! pic.twitter.com/pmCNoxxlkH
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2018
The tweeted photos suggest that work on Trump’s wall is on-going. Unfortunately, as the UK Guardian was quick to point out, these are misleading photos: The cranes are not building a wall, they are merely replacing fences – fencing that already exists.
Since the 1990s, some 650 miles of fencing (though the type of fencing is not uniform) has been built along the Mexican border and they’re in constant need of maintenance. The photos show work undertaken by a small Nebraska startup and Associated Press reported the fact as follows:
“SWF Constructors, which lists just one employee in its Omaha office, won the $11 million federal contract in November [2017] as part of a project to replace a little more than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of a current fence with post-style barriers 30 feet (9.1 meters) high in Calexico, California.”
What it boils down to is the tearing down of an old barrier built from recycled metal scraps, making the new one “significantly taller than existing walls”.
Moreover, the photos were taken before the “omnibus” spending bill passed by Congress. And the bill only granted $1.6 billion for the security system along the Mexican border – against the $25 billion asked by Trump – and none of it to build his wall.
Unsurprisingly, before Trump signed the bill, he let out a couple of protest tweets and he sounded out House Speaker Paul Ryan about the possibility of diverting some funding from the Pentagon for his wall, reportedly with little success.
But Trump is not giving up. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters that Trump has “still plans to look at potential ways” for Mexico to pay for it.
Good luck with that.
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