One of the many racist campaign promises that Donald Trump made from the moment he descended those escalators at Trump Tower and declared his candidacy was a “big, beautiful” border wall that “Mexico would pay for”—never mind the fact that Mexico has told us in both English and Spanish that they “aren’t paying for that fucking wall.” That’s right, get used to the fact that if construction on the monstrosity ever does get started, you’re going to be footing the bill—and apparently, it won’t even be a solid wall after you fork over your cash:
The director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, declined on Monday to put a firm estimate on how much President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall would cost to construct and suggested that parts of the barrier could be “see-through.”
Talking to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt about the project, Mulvaney said the cost of the wall will depend heavily on how it’s constructed, something he indicated has not yet been decided.
“It just depends on the kind of wall that you want to build, and I don't think we've settled, yet, on the actual construction,” Mulvaney said. “You can do steel, you could do concrete, you can do a combination of concrete and steel. You can supplement it with different types of technologies and so forth.”
And noting that “when you're talking about a wall that's, you know, several thousand miles long, there's going to be certain places where a certain type of wall are more appropriate than others,” Mulvaney suggested that parts could be “see-through.”
“Some places, a solid concrete barrier might be desired,” Mulvaney said. “In other places, the border folks are actually telling us, border control's actually telling us that they like the one you can see through, because it reduces the number of violent attacks on our folks. So it's a complicated program.”
First of all, Mulvaney’s claim that he has no idea how much the wall will ultimately cost is bullshit.
Last month, Reuters got a preview of a DHS report that put the estimated cost at up to $21.6 billion, nearly triple the estimate that Trump himself put forward a year ago. And according to MSNBC, some DC budget folks think that the real construction costs could balloon up to $50 billion “when all is said and done.” Yup, $50 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars for a physical monument to Donald Trump’s racism. If this scam were any bigger, it could be a course at Trump University.
One thing Mulvaney gets right is that some parts of the wall could be “see-through,” but that’s only because geological and other physical barriers along the U.S./Mexico border could make construction just about as impossible as Trump getting through a weekend without golfing:
Citing everything from bedrock depth to soil chemistry, experts say building a wall spanning the 2,000-mile border will be much tougher than erecting one of Trump's trademark skyscrapers.
“Earth doesn’t forgive sloppy,” field geologist Mika McKinnon warned in a tweet following Trump’s directive last month to design and construct the wall.
The southern border between the U.S. and Mexico is made up of wetlands, grasslands, desert, rivers, mountains and forests – all of which could pose pitfalls for builders.
Swaths of the area also feature a thick layer of loose sediment – like dirt, sand and soil – on top. Some spots are packed with hydrophilic clay soil, which swells, moves and could destroy the foundation.
“In some places the bedrock will be too deep – you’ll never be able to reach the bedrock in an affordable fashion,” McKinnon told Smithsonian Magazine.
And that doesn’t even include the fact that the wall would have to cut through sacred tribal lands. 'Over my dead body' will a wall be built, said the Tohono O’odham Nation, a federally-recognized tribe. Other border state residents seem to agree:
About 72 percent of people living on the U.S. side of the border and 86 percent of people living on the Mexican side are opposed to building a wall, a poll funded by Cronkite News, Univision News, and Dallas Morning News found. Building out a border wall also isn’t on the top of their priority list — 77 percent of Mexicans and 70 percent of Americans found that the economy, crime, and education were more important than border issues.
So Mulvaney could be telling us a non-alternative fact when he says parts of the wall could be “see-through”—but only because there won’t be an actual wall there in the first place.