President Trump now claims this privately funded border wall — touted as the “Lamborghini” of fences — was built to “make me look bad,” even though the project’s builder and funders are Trump supporters.
The wall was built after a months-long campaign by his supporters.
The group that raised money online for the wall promoted itself as supporting Trump during a government shutdown that started in December 2018 because Congress wouldn’t fund Trump’s demands for a border wall.
“I disagreed with doing this very small (tiny) section of wall, in a tricky area, by a private group which raised money by ads. It was only done to make me look bad, and perhsps it now doesn’t even work. Should have been built like rest of Wall, 500 plus miles,” Trump tweeted with a typo in reaction to the news organizations’ report about the wall.
I disagreed with doing this very small (tiny) section of wall, in a tricky area, by a private group which raised money by ads. It was only done to make me look bad, and perhsps it now doesn’t even work. Should have been built like rest of Wall, 500 plus miles. https://t.co/L8RUPCAhqc
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2020
Called ‘We Build the Wall,’ the group has raised more than $25 million promoting itself as supporting the president.
Former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon joined the group’s board and Trump ally Kris Kobach became its general counsel.
Kobach is now seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Kansas. In 2018, Kobach lost the state’s governor’s race.
The company that built the private section in January, North Dakota-based Fisher Industries, has since won a $1.3 billion border wall contract from the federal government, the largest award to date.
The section in question is a roughly 3-mile fence of steel posts just 35 feet from the Rio Grande, the river that forms the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. That´s much closer to the river than the government ordinarily builds border barriers in South Texas because of concerns about erosion and flooding that could violate U.S. treaty obligations with Mexico.
Trump tweeted Sunday in response to a ProPublica-Texas Tribune report that the riverbank has started to erode.
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered attorneys for Fisher Industries and opponents of the private wall to set a schedule for experts to visit the site and inspect any erosion.
Tommy Fisher acknowledged that there had been some erosion on the land in front of the fencing caused by rain and the natural flow of the river.
He said his crews planned to install more organic material to fill the gaps or insert rock if erosion continues, but that other parts of the wall remained untouched.
‘The wall will stand for 150 years, you mark my words,’ Fisher said.
Experts and people who live and work near the property have warned that building so close to the river would cause flooding or a break in the fence.
And a binational commission earlier this year found that the project violates U.S. treaty obligations and called on Fisher to make changes.
President Trump criticized the privately funded section of border wall that was built by his own supporters upon hearing that it was showing signs of erosion
Marianna Trevino Wright, executive director of the nonprofit National Butterfly Center, has long opposed the project and warned it could damage the center, which is adjacent to where the private wall was being built.
‘It is troubling that President Trump admits to prior knowledge of this project – one he should have insisted comply with U.S. law, rather than proceed in violation of it,’ she said Sunday.
U.S. Attorney Ryan Patrick of the Southern District of Texas called the private wall a “vanity project’ and a “scam.”
His office sued Fisher Sand and Gravel, its subsidiaries, and We Build the Wall on behalf of the International Boundary and Water Commission, to stop it from building the fence until it submitted a detailed engineering study to determine its impact on the flow of the Rio Grande and nearby properties. The commission is a binational body that regulates development in the floodplain between the U.S. and Mexico to ensure boundary treaties aren’t violated.
“We already owned the land a few hundred yards from the river and it cut the peninsula instead of following the river,” Patrick tweeted Sunday. “We said it was too close to the water, erosion would be an issue, the location made no sense, etc. Now we risk the thing falling down in a big storm/flood.”
Six engineering and hydrology experts consulted by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune said that it was concerning to see the level of erosion around the fence so soon after construction and that it shouldn’t have been built so close to the river.
Just months after the wall went up, the experts said photos reveal a series of gashes and gullies at various points along the structure where rainwater runoff has scoured the sandy loam beneath the foundation.
Fisher’s rise to border wall building came with the help of the conservative nonprofit We Build the Wall, which counts former Trump political strategist Steve Bannon as a board member.
On Sunday, Brian Kolfage, its founder and a decorated Iraq War veteran, countered Trump’s tweet.
“The private wall that @WeBuildtheWall built and funded is @DHSgov @CBP ENDORSED and APPROVED. Never forget it,” he tweeted, along with a video of Border Patrol leadership supporting its initiatives.
In a December video no longer online, Kolfage told Alicia Powe of Gateway Pundit, a far-right news and opinion website, that his group had a back channel to the administration via board member Bannon and general counsel and former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who let Trump know what We Build the Wall is doing.
“We’ve gotten the support of the president first hand, we’ve had people to meet with the president who have informed him directly of what’s going on, and President Trump loves what we are doing,” he said.
“But he doesn’t come out and support much because we believe that the leftists will try to use it against him by saying ‘this private industry is doing more than he’s doing’ and things like that, they’ll try to spin it, so we believe that’s why he’s quiet about it up on the forefront but supports us in the back,” he added.
We Build the Wall has raised $25 million to help Trump achieve his campaign promise of 500 miles of border barriers before the end of the year; so far he’s built more than 200 miles, with much of the work replacing dilapidated and shorter fences.
Initially, the idea was to give the funds to the federal government, but when that wasn’t legally possible, the group shifted its mission to helping the administration build the fence using private companies.