The five billion dollar wall

Great Debates
101

Because it isn’t. Every time some Republican tries to make this claim, Trump flies into a snit and twits that the wall is an actual concrete wall.

You can try to make the clam that Trump is so much of an idiot that we shouldn’t pay any attention to his written and spoken words, no matter how forcefully expressed. We will buy that. But then it’s hard to make any arguments on any side if there is no agreement about what we’re talking about and Trump himself is not providing any guidance.

Let Trump provide his complete plan for combating illegal immigration, including a final price tag, and we can start examining it. Until then, all he gets is mockery for his idiocy, hypocrisy, and bluster.

102

Oh, people can estimate the costs of putting more walls or people on the border. That’s totally easy to do.

The real question is, is spending more money on walls and whatnot just a waste of money? Considering how illegal immigration has declined over the last two decades (cite) the answer would seem to be, yep.

103

If it’s a euphemism (I’d probably call it more of a metonym), then great! Let Congress appropriate funds for immigration and border security measures that might actually do some good, call it the TRUMP-WALL Act (someone else can reverse-engineer the acronym), Donnie can scribble his squiggle on it while making his “Presidential tough guy” face, and everybody goes home happy.

(Well… except maybe for a lot of red-hatted Trumpeteers who are going to show up at his next Hurrendurrh Rally so angry they’re grinding their tooth.)

104

Well, we need enuf border control to make smuggling harder.

But there’s little reason to waste it on keeping people who want to work out of the country.

105

Wailing Asshole Loss Leader

106

That’s the heart of the problem: facts. Facts have a well-known liberal bias.

107

They torpedoed immigration reform well before Trump. Still, it is true that Dems vote for reasonable fences.

108

I saw a cartoon recently captioned “Trump’s Actual Wall”, in which a mason was laying bricks on the Wall, as its end was drawing closer to the US-Mexico border.

109

Here’s an exchange that appeared on Fox News between host Leland Vittert and conservative journalist David Mark:

I’m still waiting for Magiver to come back and give us the plan.

110

Not sure if you heard that the war is over: Drugs won.

111

Trump now says he might declare a national emergency and use military funds to build the wall. The Pentagon says there’s $1-2 billion. The rest would come out of military construction projects the Pentagon deems critical for preparedness.

Trump’s remark, “I can do it if I want” may best summarize his approach to the presidency.

112

Out of this 5 billion, how much of it is labor cost?

It would be ironic is Trump hired Mexicans, or brought in people from over seas from India to work for cheap to build his wall.

113

They had one hell of a victory party, too.

114

It’s the attitude of a petulant three year old.

Stranger

115

Since that seems to be how he staffs his resorts, no doubt.

116

I bet he could get Roger Waters to build the Wall for a lot less.

117

Can they instead build a small symbolic wall in Washington with TRUMP written on it to the benefit of homeless people and dogs needing a place to urinate?

118

I wonder how much smuggling there is through controlled checkpoints vs elsewhere. Plenty of desperate people willing to hide contraband on their person or in their vehicle. In all the time I crossed between Cd. Juárez and El Paso, I got dog-sniffed on foot once and never in a car. But that’s hardly a good sample size. And I haven’t done it in a while.

119

This says that marijuana is typically smuggled in between ports of entry, and hard drugs are smuggled in through ports of entry.

120

He might go for that, as long as there were cameras, so he could watch.