Remember Trump’s border wall?
Many of us have been so distracted by the coronavirus pandemic that we’ve let the president’s obsession slip off of our list of concerns.
But Trump hasn’t forgotten, and the Washington Post reports he is again pushing to have it painted black, which would add at least half a billion taxpayer dollars to its cost.
Trump thinks a black wall — really a fence of 30-foot steel bollards — would be more intimidating to migrants and make it too hot to touch in summer months along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“The president’s determination to have the steel bollards coated in black has fluctuated during the past several years, and military commanders and border officials believed as recently as last fall that they had finally talked him out of it,” the Post says.
But at a White House meeting last month, Trump told son-in-law/senior adviser Jared Kushner to proceed with the paint job, the Post says, citing four officials “with knowledge of the meeting.”
The Post says it obtained a copy of painting estimates by federal contracting officials, which “shows costs ranging from $500 million for two coats of acrylic paint to more than $3 billion for a premium ‘powder coating.’”
As with so much that he says and does, Trump’s fixation on the wall is politically motivated.
“Trump has made the border wall a pillar of his reelection pitch, promising to finish 500 miles by early next year, a goal that will require crews to nearly double their pace in coming months. Crews have completed about 175 miles of new barriers so far,” the Post says.
Left unpainted, the steel bollards would oxidize to a rusty orange color; engineers say painting the sections already in place would be much more expensive than painting them before they go up.
Even the “cheapest” option for painting would cost about $1.2 million per mile.