Donald Trump came to Arizona on Thursday to heap praise on his border wall, but the heap of rusting idle parts lying next to that wall tell the story of broken campaign promises from the former guy.
Trump, joined by Border Patrol union leader Paul A. Perez, called it “the Rolls-Royce of walls,” and said the unused segments lying to his left were the “Kamala wall.”
Fact-Check:
This section of 20-foot steel slats was actually built during former president Barack Obama’s administration. Trump added the unfinished extension up the hillside, an engineering challenge that cost at least $35 million a mile. The unused panels of 30-foot beams were procured during the Trump administration and never erected.
“Where you were, that was kind of a joke today,” said John Ladd, a Trump supporter whose ranch extends along the border, explained while driving the dirt road along the barrier, the gapped panels making a flipbook out of the shrubby trees and grass on the other side. “Had to be in front of Trump’s wall, but you went to Montezuma, and that’s Obama’s wall.”
The Cochise County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that the constructed barrier was built during the Obama administration. Neither Perez or the Trump campaign responded to questions about their lies.
The spot along the U.S.-Mexico border has often served as a backdrop for Republican photo ops, but there were no caravans, no vicious military-age foreigners, criminals, terrorists or rapists from prisons and mental institutions to be seen.
