Head of Border Patrol admits 'brand-new' wall is actually not new

The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency released drone footage of wall construction on Saturday, as part of the Trump administration’s attempts to claim that it is building new border wall when it isn’t.

Acting CBP commissioner Mark Morgan appeared on “Fox & Friends,” Trump’s favorite Fox News show, on Tuesday morning to tout the footage. But even as he insisted that there is new construction on the border, he admitted that it’s only replacing existing wall that was there before Trump came to office.

“It’s brand new,” Morgan said of the fence featured in the video. “There’s a false narrative out there that really wants to make a big deal about that it’s replacement.”

Even in claiming the wall is new, Morgan admitted it’s a “replacement.”

“What was there was old, dilapidated ineffective and it didn’t work,” he said, but then added, “Every mile that’s being built is absolutely a new wall.”

Morgan then claimed Trump was somehow fulfilling his campaign promise to build a wall that Mexico would pay for.

“If you ask the men and women of Border Patrol, this president is giving them exactly what they’ve been asking for: this brand-new bollard-type wall,” Morgan said. “That’s what the experts asked for and that’s what the president is delivering.”

The Trump administration hasn’t built a single new mile of new wall in over two years, no matter what Morgan, who once called children “soon to be MS-13 gang members,” says.

What Trump has been doing is replacing old sections of border wall — 60 miles of it — and not constructing the “big, beautiful wall” he promised for months on the campaign trail. Even his declaration of a “national emergency” has not hastened new wall construction.

Trump has been stymied by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats, who have opposed efforts to waste taxpayer dollars on the wall. And despite Trump’s rallying cry on the campaign trail, Mexico has continued to state that it will not pay for any wall construction.

Since then, Trump has been trying to siphon money from American taxpayers, including funds earmarked for the military, to use on the wall.

And none of the construction is new.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.