That Big Beautiful Wall in 2022

  

"[T]he great state of Texas will step up and do the government's job... Texas is now building our own border wall." Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott at a February 28th Campaign Appearance in San Antonio

“Build the Wall!”  

House Representatives, Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) & Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), 

chanting during Biden’s State of the Union speech, March 1st. 

Given the cost of construction, you might think that at least that new wall might work to keep “Rapists! Criminals! Drug smugglers! Terrorists!,” dark, dangerous outsiders from Mexico, along with other undesirables from “shithole” countries, from entering the U.S. After all, it’s one of the few tangible planks in the GOP platform and very much among Donald Trump’s remaining top priorities should he ever return to the presidency. But there’s one tiny catch: those sections of the “wall” – somewhere between 18’ and 30’ tall – that Trump did manage to get built leaked like a sieve; way too easy for smugglers to penetrate. All that new wall did was to justify higher street prices for narcotics – hence an incentive for desperate addicts to commit crimes to get that extra money – which had to delight the cartels no end. Experts always told us that Trump’s wall would not work… and they were so right.

Those smugglers, reported by Nicholas Goldberg for the March 9th Los Angeles Times, “have cut through Donald Trump’s supposedly impregnable border wall more than 3,000 times… According to an investigation by the Washington Post, the gangs use cheap power tools available at any hardware store. The cuts are made near the bottom of the fencing, severing the steel beams — known as bollards — from the concrete they’re embedded in. At that point, they’re left dangling, connected only at the top. They can then be pushed aside, creating a gap wide enough for people and drugs to pass through. The U.S. government has spent $2.6 million to repair the cuts between 2019 and 2021…

“Trump, you will remember, was swept into office in 2016 on a promise to build a barrier along the 1,954-mile-long U.S.-Mexican border. When he left office in 2021, he had built 458 miles out of a planned 738 miles of barrier — mostly tall metal fencing, including 77 miles in California. Much of that was in places where some kind of barrier had previously existed, although the Trump version is generally bigger and more imposing.

“Trump’s initial promises that Mexico would pay for the wall’s construction never came to pass. Instead, U.S. taxpayers spent about $11 billion on the project; in some places it cost more than $40 million per mile. Trump also insisted that his ‘big beautiful wall’ would be ‘virtually impenetrable.’… Last March, smugglers cut an opening in Trump’s bollard wall so broad that two SUVs filled with migrants were able to drive through. (One later hit a truck near Holtville, Calif., killing 13.) Maintenance records kept by Customs and Border Protection show the bollards are cut most often in California. The Border Patrol’s El Centro sector has recorded the most breaches, 1,867; the San Diego sector ranked second, with 866… Also, by the way, people are climbing up and over the wall using makeshift ladders or ropes.”

But politicians anxious to secure a Trump endorsement, like Boebert and Taylor Green above, see embracing finishing that wall as a cornerstone of securing Trump-love. And if he weren’t such a right-wing, “overturn Roe v Wade,” minority voting restriction and gender rights bigot hellbent on erasing truth from public school history books, Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott would easily qualify as the clown prince of Trump sycophants. So, what could secure his place GOP politics more than picking up the “stupid” mantle to commit Texas funds to finish that wall, at least in Texas? Nothing, even as Texas’ power generating capacity and grid are still among the worst in the nation. Wasting taxpayers’ money to build political power is a Trump basic.

Back on July 16th, the Texas Tribune wrote of Governor Abbott’s latest campaign pledge: “Ultimately, Trump’s administration erected about 80 miles of new barrier before he left office, including 21 at the Texas-Mexico border, paid for by the U.S. government. Now, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Trump supporter who has raised his rhetoric on immigration in recent years, has taken on the tall order of building a wall along the 1,200-mile Texas-Mexico border.” As the quote at the top of this blog illustrates, Abbott continues to prioritize this waste of Texas taxpayers’ money. Trump has to love that. American taxpayers just might have other priorities.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as the wall-climbing Trump warriors assaulting the Capitol on January 6, 2021 (pictured above) already knew, scaling impenetrable walls is a piece of cake.