Trump's Most Monumental Lie
On This Day In 2020
52 miles down; only 1,874 to go.
OTDI 2020, less than a month before the election, Donald Trump spewed what may have been the “largest” lie of the 30,573 he told as president.
At a rally that day, he bragged that he actually had been building his promised Border Wall all along…and that it was on track for completion. And that Mexico had been paying for it.
Sanford, FL: “And by the way, Mexico is paying. They hate to say it: Mexico is paying for it.”
Johnstown, PA: “And Mexico is paying for the wall, by the way. You know that. I’ve been saying it. They hate to hear that. But they’re paying.”
Des Moines, IA: “And as I said, Mexico is paying for the wall.”
As you know, during the 2016 campaign he had vowed to build his “big, beautiful wall” across the 1,926 miles of the border. It was, arguably, the most impactful campaign promise in generations.
By the time he left, though, the truth was that Trump had built just 52 miles of new primary "wall systems” and 33 miles of secondary wall systems. (His project also replaced 351 miles of existing primary wall and 22 miles of existing secondary wall.) Not exactly our master builder he had pitched himself to be.
Nor is he the protector of our wallets. When he was first campaigning, Trump estimated his wall would cost about $4.2 million per mile. But, it didn’t matter, because Mexico would pay for it anyway.
In reality: The price paid by US taxpayers? As much as $46 million per mile. (990% higher)
In reality: The price paid by Mexico’s taxpayers? $0
(Btw, how did Trump get the money to work on his wall? Well, he took a good chunk of it from military projects, after Congress refused to allocate him the funds he requested.)
These days, rather than slink away in shame, Trump simply lies about it, conjuring miles and dollars out of thin air for his followers to admire.
We touched on this the other day. But, it bears repeating: what might have been the inspiration for Trump's monumental lies? In a 1990 Vanity Fair interview, Ivana Trump, Donald’s first wife, told her lawyer that Trump “reads a book of Hitler's collected speeches…which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed.” Interesting, because the Nazis felt about getting ordinary people to believe lies: “[i]t would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
Dive Deeper
CNN’s fact check on building and paying for his wall
The BBC reports on the length of new wall
In November 2019, Newsweek reported here that the Border Protection Commissioner admitted no new wall had been built
PolitiFact’s analysis of Trump’s wall-building
U.S. News and World Report cited the cost estimate
Salon covered the concept of the Big Lie and the Nazis
Marie Brenner’s interview with Ivana Trump is in Vanity Fair