There are plenty of issues facing the great state of Texas right now: a pandemic still thriving thanks to successful anti-vax campaigns, school shootings, voting rights debates, and power outages threatening the most vulnerable populations during a record summer heatwave.
But you know what Governor Greg Abbott cares about? Building a border wall, naturally.
That’s right, the Trumpists’ beloved rallying cry is back (kind of) and Abbott’s picking up the torch left. The embattled politician paid a visit to the Texas-Mexico border last week where he announced that the state would be resuming its plan to build a wall, though he left out some key details about when and who would be paying for it. But, according to the Texas Tribune, in a recent appearance on a conservative podcast, Abbott expanded on his efforts to waste money by walling off parts of his state. His genius idea for getting it done? Crowd-funding!
“When I do make the announcement later on this week, I will also be providing a link that you can click on and go to for everybody in the United States — really everybody in the entire world — who wants to help Texas build the border wall, there will be a place on there where they can contribute,” Abbott revealed during the interview, promising “great transparency” when it comes to how and where funds are directed on his Kickstarter campaign gets underway.
This isn’t the first time conservatives created a donation fund to erect a giant, useless hunk of metal on our border. The Trump crowd’s own Build the Wall campaign raised over $25 million to build 3 miles of fence at one point but, in a twist literally, everyone should’ve seen coming, Steve Bannon and a handful of others in charge of the fund misused that money and defrauded donors. Bannon was pardoned by Trump before he could stand trial, and Trump, despite siphoning taxpayer money from the military and other government departments to finish the wall, never did, which is why Abbott seems so passionate about completing the project in Texas and why he believes “the entire world” will want to help him put up an over-priced fence in his backyard.
Twitter users might not constitute the “entire world” but they had some thoughts:
Greg Abbott just announced that he's the new Steve Bannon.
— Democratic Coalition (@TheDemCoalition) June 15, 2021
Governor Greg Abbott is now planning to build a wall along the Mexico border. How original.
— Kolleen (@littlewhitty) June 11, 2021
https://twitter.com/dliebelson/status/1404519111640731649
Maybe a better course of action would be to solve the privatized energy mess he’s gotten his state in first? Just spitballing here.