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A few months ago, Donald Trump boasted that during his term, he “built 571 miles” of border wall. The former president added that he was poised to add another 200 miles within a few weeks, concluding, “I built much more wall than I said I was going to build.”
All of this was spectacularly untrue. In fact, every element of the Republican’s claims turned reality on its head, badly distorting the facts about an issue he appears to consider one of his top priorities.
It was emblematic of the GOP’s broader problem with the debate over border policy: Reality keeps getting in the way of their campaign rhetoric.
The Washington Post, for example, recently published an analysis of the party’s advertising, highlighting dozens of ads that criticize the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the border, “while showing chaotic scenes that were filmed in 2018 under the Trump administration.”
One commercial in particular showed footage of Central American migrants in Tijuana rushing the southern border. The voice-over and text blamed Democrats for the unrest, which actually unfolded during Trump’s presidency.
It was against this backdrop that the former president traveled to Arizona last week for a border-wall photo-op, though Team Trump apparently forgot to care about the details. The Post reported:
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump came here on Thursday to heap praise on the structure standing to his right — “the Rolls-Royce of walls,” he called it — and lament the unused segments lying to his left. Joining him, Border Patrol union leader Paul A. Perez called the standing fence “Trump wall” and the idle parts “Kamala wall,” after Trump’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
There was a dramatic problem with the rhetoric: As the Post’s article explained, “This section of 20-foot steel slats was actually built during the administration of President Barack Obama.”
In case this isn’t obvious, Democrats have never said border barriers are entirely unnecessary between the Pacific Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. There are high-traffic areas, party officials have long said, in which it makes sense to have structures to prevent illegal crossings. Throughout Obama’s term, it was not uncommon to build and repair barriers along these parts of the border.
As of last week, Trump tried to take credit for some of the Obama administration’s work, either (a) hoping the public wouldn’t know the difference, or (b) cluelessly unaware of reality.
Whatever the explanation, the Republican keeps trying to make a border wall the centerpiece of his bid for a second term, and he keeps tripping over it.