Peace Piper
Banned
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2011
- Messages
- 1,466
LA TIMES 6/23/20
President Trump, whose plans to campaign on a booming economy were ruined by the coronavirus, traveled Tuesday to the southern edge of Arizona to highlight completion of "more than 200 miles of powerful border wall" with Mexico.
He didn't mention the fine print.
Nearly all 216 miles built since Trump took office replaced outdated or dilapidated fencing. Only about "three miles of new border wall system [have been] constructed in locations where no barriers previously existed," according to Homeland Security's June 19 status report on the wall.
US Customs and Border Protection: Border Wall System
https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/along-us-borders/border-wall-system
https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/along-us-borders/border-wall-system
Trump repeatedly pledged during and after his 2016 campaign that he'd make Mexico pay for "a big beautiful wall" on the entire 1,954-mile border. So far, the Trump administration has spent $15 billion on the project. Mexico has not contributed anything.
Aware of the discrepancy, Mark A. Morgan, the acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said hairsplitting over how much of the wall is new amounted to "a false political narrative."
"From an operational law enforcement perspective, those are new miles of wall system that are going into the ground," Morgan told reporters.
Trump promised to complete "close to 500 miles" of wall by the end of 2020 during a roundtable discussion at a U.S. Border Patrol station in Yuma, Ariz., before touring a nearby section of wall.
He touted the new and refurbished walls as "pretty much un-climbable" and said illegal border crossings have dropped 84% over the last year, although the drop is partly due to the economy cratering this year during the COVID-19 outbreak and aggressive efforts to expel migrants, including asylum seekers and unaccompanied minors.
The heavy salesmanship by the president, making his second trip to Arizona in six weeks, suggested he is still searching for a winning campaign message less than five months before election day, especially in a state that he won handily in 2016 but that now appears in play for Democrats.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, leads Trump by four percentage points in Arizona, according to the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls.
The visit to Yuma, and later to Phoenix, marked Trump's first public appearance since his poorly attended rally Saturday night in Tulsa, Okla., which has sparked speculation by some Republicans that Trump's campaign needed major retooling... MORE: https://news.yahoo.com/trump-campaigns-border-wall-progress-230002232.html
A few decades ago, Americans managed to build an interstate highway system that connected Miami to Seattle and Maine to San Diego. They also did things like go to the moon.
Today's sorry lot cannot even build 4 miles of a wall ON A BORDER in FOUR YEARS. Pathetic, arrogant, spoiled, lazy do-nothings - useless eaters. Everyone in the country should be ashamed of themselves. AMERICA FELL ON YOUR WATCH
Losers
Meanwhile, China can build a new hospital in TEN DAYS and the Largest High Speed Rail system in the world in 15 years - complete with track, stations and trainsets- all while Americans watched their government blow TRILLIONS AND TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS chasing a bunch of "rebels" THAT THEY FUNDED around sand dunes 8,000 miles away.
Pathetic.
And the "choice" for this sorry bunch of has-beens in November is between 2 septuagenarian pussy-grabbers, one of which cannot complete a sentence and the other who hasn't ever read a book in his life.
Oh well, every empire fails at some point. Now ON to Venezuela! or maybe China- as if today's Americans are any competition.
