Typical - Part 2

Here's the story behind the plaque.

The 30-foot barrier falls short of the image of a solid border wall along the US–Mexico border that Trump conjured during his presidential campaign. The 2.25-mile-long barrier has space between each metal post, and it replaces a fence that was made of landing mats from the Vietnam War.

Still, a plaque affixed to the fence proclaims it to be the first section of Trump’s border wall, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen wasn’t having it any other way.

“This looks like a wall,” she said. “It’s 30 feet tall. I think the difference is not only is it see-through but it’s different than a fence in that it’s part of a system...it has technology. It’s a wall. This is what the president has asked us to do. It’s part of a system.”

  Buzzfeed

It has technology?

Never mind that David Kim, the assistant chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol’s El Centro sector, where this barrier is located, told the Desert Sun in February, when construction began, that the project shouldn’t be linked to the debate about the wall.

“This is a local tactical infrastructure project that was planned for quite some time,” Kim was quoted as telling the Desert Sun.

[...]

Trump referred to the Calexico project during a March speech with a crowd of union workers and supporters in Ohio as the beginning of construction on his long-promised wall.

“We started building our wall, I’m so proud of it. We started. We have $1.6 billion. You saw the pictures yesterday. I said what a thing of beauty,” Trump said then.

The pictures he was referring to were from a tweet of the Calexico project.

But the project had been planned before Trump even announced his presidential candidacy in 2015.

Katie Waldman, a spokesperson for DHS, acknowledged that the Border Patrol first requested the project in 2009, but it languished for the entirety of the Obama administration.

[...]

It “would not have broken ground or been as expeditiously completed without the ardent support of President Trump,” she said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “The bottom line is under this president we are building the first new border wall in a decade.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.