Fact check: Trump says his border wall is under construction. It’s not.
When the crowd at President Donald Trump’s South Carolina campaign rally last week started up the now-familiar chant of “Build that wall, build that wall,” he stopped to chastise them.
“It’s not ‘build that wall’ anymore, it’s, ‘Continue building that wall,'” he said. “Because we’re building it.”
He repeated this claim a day later at the White House.
“We’ve started the wall,” Trump said. “Started up in San Diego and other places. It’s under construction with $1.6 billion dollars, but we’re going to ask for an increase in wall spending so we can finish it quicker.”
But that’s not true. While some new fencing has been built along the U.S.-Mexico border in the past year, it’s not the concrete barrier Trump vowed because of the strings Congress put on the cash.
THE FACTS
The president rooted his campaign and early presidency in the idea that the southern border needed a concrete wall to secure American borders, which he said was overrun by crime and drugs. He said over and over that Mexico would pay for it. (Mexico has so far refused.)