Trump Keeps Lying About Having Started His Wall, And His Supporters Don’t Care

The president says Congress has given him nearly $5 billion to start building his “Great Wall.” The actual figure is zero.



PENSACOLA, Fla. ― Donald Trump keeps claiming that construction on his promised “great wall” is well underway although not a single yard of it has been built, and his supporters are getting mad ― not at the president, but at those who point out his lie.

“I don’t care. He has done more than any Republican or Democrat,” said Pete Sandifer, a 58-year-old military retiree who with his wife drove two and a half hours from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to attend Trump’s rally in the far western Florida Panhandle.

Sharon Sandifer, 43, disputed that Trump has been unable to secure any funding for his wall along the U.S.-Mexico border from any source ― a fact easily proven in the spending legislation that Trump himself has signed.

“Excuse me,” she told HuffPost a short while before Trump arrived at Pensacola International Airport for a Saturday evening rally. “But it’s your word against his.”

Robert Robertson, in line to clear security and enter the massive hangar where Trump was to speak, was not interested in hearing about Trump’s falsehoods about the wall ― or anything else, for that matter.

“All politicians are liars. They’re all weasels,” said the 60-year-old from Panama City. “You know why he’s so good? Because he’s up there breaking all the furniture. If he wanted to shoot somebody on Broadway, I’d vote ‘not guilty.’”

Rick Wilson, a Florida GOP consultant and a Trump critic from the time he entered the presidential race, said the Trump supporters who ignore his failure to deliver on the signature promise of his campaign ― let alone get Mexico to pay for it, which he also promised ― speak volumes.

“They either think it’s mostly built, or they think the Mexican check just hasn’t cleared yet,” Wilson said. “It’s just magical thinking.”

Trump promised hundreds of times during his campaign that he would force Mexico to pay for the wall’s construction. Yet nearly two years into his presidency, he has not even once broached the topic with that country. In fact, he acknowledged to Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto just days after taking office that he understood Mexico would not pay for the wall but asked Peña Nieto not to say that publicly to avoid embarrassing Trump with his supporters.

That promise of forcing Mexico to pay, first made the day Trump came down his Manhattan condo escalator to announce his campaign in June 2015, has now been abandoned. Instead, Trump has taken to claiming in recent months that Congress gave him $1.6 billion to start wall construction. He later increased that amount to $3.2 billion, and in recent speeches he has added a third $1.6 billion tranche, bringing the supposed total to nearly $5 billion.

In fact, the actual dollar amount Congress has appropriated for wall construction is zero.

Sharon and Pete Sandifer drove two and half hours from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to see Trump speak in Pensacola Saturday night. She refuses to believe that Trump is lying when he claims work has started on his border wall. He says he doesn’t care even if Trump is lying.