Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Democratic leadership today over the topic of—ladies and gentlemen, start your sign now—the wall. Trump wants more money for the wall, or he’s threatening a government shutdown just in time for Christmas. Because that’s the kind of thing that makes people love him.
To bolster his negotiating position, Trump started his Tuesday morning with lies. That’s not unusual. But not all lies are created equal.
How much of the wall has been built? None. Exactly none. Precisely none. There are exactly nadda point zip diddly miles of Trump’s wall. That’s how much. Granted, there are the tiny sections of sample walls that Trump had built as mini-monoliths to his ego—but those aren’t even standing on the border. “The remaining sections of the Wall” would be all of the wall.
Even for Trump, this seems like an odd sort of lie. It makes you wonder … what do they tell Trump? Does part of the “Keep him pressing the Coke button and not that other button” policy involve bringing him aerial photos each morning to show the fantastic progress being made on his wall? But even so, doesn’t he wonder why he keeps having to tell people that the wall is out there? Doesn’t he wonder why no one else ever sees it? Where is this wall, anyway?
Another of Trump’s morning tweets provides a clue.
A Great Wall? Maybe that’s the answer: Trump’s wall is behind held up by trade negotiations with China.
And sure enough, as Trump’s executive time wore on, he jumped straight from the Great Wall, to Great Wall providers.
Though no matter what Trump has to say on China, he is claiming to have “already built large new sections” which simply is not true. There are no large new sections. Or small new sections. Or sections. Please, White House press corps, should Sarah Sanders ever deign to have another fracas, someone please ask her—just where is this wall?
Trump also ties all this to a claim that the military will just “build the remaining sections” if Democrats don’t hand him enough money to order the wall he wants from Beijing. Because clearly it doesn’t cost anything if the military does it.
There is no wall. There is not going to be a wall. Yes, the military has uncoiled a few hundred yards of razor wire along the border—at cost of over $72 million and counting. That’s not a wall. And it’s not going to be.
Trump clearly intended his morning multi-part wall rant to put pressure on Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer when they meet later today. But the Democratic leaders should reply by asking Trump to join them in a tour of the large, and completed, sections of the wall. They can offer to build wall more in the only place it now exists—Trump’s imagination. And the funding can be just as fictional.