A private group apparently thinks Donald Trump needs help getting his border wall done—or just wants to suck up badly enough to offer him help. “We Build the Wall,” the crowdfunded group run by Brian Kolfage, an Air Force veteran with a desire for attention nearly as big as Trump’s, has offered to build sections of border wall on government land and then donate it.
We Build the Wall has so far concentrated on building sections of wall on private land, but Kolfage now claims that the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection are “highly involved” in making private building happen on public land. “They said they were going to help us get it done because there was a need to get it done,” he told CNN.
For its part, CBP said “no donation of border wall has been formally offered, adjudicated and/or accepted to date,” but that if a formal offer is made, it will have to comply with a directive for gift acceptance. That would require compliance with government regulations—something it’s a fair bet We Build the Wall isn’t a big fan of—and might even require the government to solicit bids to ensure a competitive process in awarding construction contracts. Kolfage claims “We will go through the same process that any federal contract has to go through to build this wall,” but he’s an attention-hungry grifter, so … you know.
It is really hard to assess what’s going on when you can’t trust any of the parties involved to be truthful. According to Kolfage, interest in the donated wall is strong at DHS and officials are helping to speed it through. CBP, meanwhile, is offering up boilerplate about how it provided We Build the Wall with standard information “regarding what is necessary to consider any potential donation in accordance with DHS's gift acceptance policies and procedures as well as applicable statutes and regulations.” It’s more or less equally believable that CBP officials are rolling their eyes at the amateurs but not wanting to publicly insult such strong supporters or that CBP is fully on board but playing it cool in public and that in a few months time Donald Trump will be personally attending a groundbreaking ceremony. Because that’s how much of a mess things are here in the Trump era.