Donald Trump‘s unlikely but very real place as the current Republican frontrunner for the White House has come under a lot of scrutiny, and one major point of criticism pointed to by The Donald’s detractors has been the vow to build a colossal border wall with Mexico along the south of the United States. It’s a plan that’s been billed by opponents as unrealistic, xenophobic, and downright nutty (including to Mexican officials), but this week we saw Trump unveil how much such a project would cost.
The 69-year-old New Yorker revealed his vision for the wall’s price point when chatting with MSNBC. So what’s the damage? $8 billion says The Donald, which he noted to Tamron Hall would be paid for by Mexico. (Former Mexican president Felipe Calderón suggests you shouldn’t bank on that.) Trump pointed to the Great Wall of China as an example of how doable this project could be. We’ve kept MSNBC’s commentary in the quote.
“What we’re doing is we have 2,000 miles, right? 2,000 miles. It’s long but not 13,000 miles like they have in China,” he said, comparing his self-declared great wall with the Great Wall of China, which took hundreds of years to build and reportedly resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of workers. “Of the 2,000, we don’t need 2,000, we need 1,000 because we have natural barriers … and I’m taking it price per square foot and a price per square, you know, per mile,”
Trump figures the actual physical wall will be “35 to 40 feet high” and about as cosmetically pleasing as you can make a giant border wall. Outlets like CNBC agree that the wall cost will be in the billions, but the total is likely to be a lot more than what Trump’s currently claiming. Trump said in his chat with MSNBC that his total is a “very simple calculation.”
Comments about Mexico and his push for a massive physical block between the two countries has been a staple of the Trump campaign. During his 2015 speech touting his decision to join the presidential race, Trump urged anyone listening to “mark my words” when it comes to both his plan to build the wall and get Mexico to pony up for the construction. He was pretty bullish on the quality of the wall, too.
“I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively.”
For more on Donald Trump’s “unorthodox” approach to the political landscape, check out what The Donald had to say about his philosophy on North Korea.
(Via Washington Post)