Trump to visit plaque praising him for 'new' fence that's decades old

Trump will fly at taxpayer expense on board Air Force One to visit a plaque he commissioned praising himself for building a border wall that does not exist.

Trump is scheduled to visit Calexico, California, for a photo op at a refurbished segment of border fence. “Officials say he will be visiting a newly completed section of the border fence replacing an older part made during the Vietnam War,” KESQ reported.

Trump will attend “a briefing and tour of the completed section of the wall,” the White House claimed in a press release. As part of that tour, Trump will visit with a plaque with his name in large, all-caps letters commemorating “completion of the first section of President Trump’s border wall.”

For all intents and purposes, it is a participation trophy for an accomplishment that has not been achieved.

CONFIRMED: President Trump will be visiting the US-Mexico border at #Calexico on Friday. The White House says he will tour the section of the border fence with this plaque, marking the “completion of the first section of President Trump’s #BorderWall.” pic.twitter.com/DYUyMozIx4

— Rafael Carranza 🌵 (@RafaelCarranza) April 1, 2019

First, the fence is not a wall.

As NBC reported when the ludicrous plaque was first installed last October, the structure is a “30-foot tall barrier made of steel bollards.”

Trump’s underling, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, defended the inaccurate plaque: “It’s a wall, this is what the president has asked us to do. It’s part of a system.”

It isn’t a wall. It’s a fence.

None other than Trump himself has pointed out the distinction between these two things is very clear.

“Jeb Bush just talked about my border proposal to build a ‘fence.’ It’s not a fence, Jeb, it’s a WALL, and there’s a BIG difference!” Trump wrote in 2015. Indeed.

Even if the fence was a wall (it isn’t), it is ludicrous for Trump to take credit for its erection — again.

Because the project to erect the fence in Calexico was initiated under President Barack Obama in 2009, and not by Trump.

Trump has not been allowed to waste billions of tax dollars to erect a racist border wall. Democrats forced him to reopen the federal government after he shut it down for the wall. He has also been rebuffed in efforts to divert military funds to a wall.

But he got his plaque commemorating his phony victory and he will now fly hundreds of miles to visit the piece of metal while his wall project — despite his delusions — continues to be dead on arrival.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.