President Donald Trump rolled out a new set of lies on Wednesday morning to argue in support of his wall by claiming walls built around the globe are “100 percent successful.” They’re not.
As the government shutdown nears the end of its fourth week, Trump watched Fox & Friends and began quoting random statistics the hosts threw around stemming from a USA Today article about how many walls have been built around the world since World War II and their effectiveness:
There are now 77 major or significant Walls built around the world, with 45 countries planning or building Walls. Over 800 miles of Walls have been built in Europe since only 2015. They have all been recognized as close to 100% successful. Stop the crime at our Southern Border!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2019
Trump then attacked Democrats:
It is becoming more and more obvious that the Radical Democrats are a Party of open borders and crime. They want nothing to do with the major Humanitarian Crisis on our Southern Border. #2020!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2019
The problem is that Trump, nor Fox News, actually read the USA Today article. Had they done so, they would know that walls are not effective and actually cause more problems than they solve.
“Walls are public relations exercises where governments demonstrate that they are actually doing something,” Elisabeth Vallet, a geography professor at the University of Quebec-Montreal told the publication. “They usually create more problems.”
USA Today then goes on to list several notable walls, such as the Great Wall of China which was costly to build yet ineffective because 13,000 miles of it just was not long enough.
Then there’s the wall on the West Bank separating Israel and Palestine which has only caused higher tensions and more violence in the region.
The Berlin Wall was arguably the most militarized wall, but at least 5,000 people crossed the barrier and nearly 140 were killed trying.
Finland has a fence, but that’s just to keep reindeer from crossing into Russia.
The bottom line is that walls don’t work and they just create more problems.
Even Trump’s proposed wall on the southern border would create problems. It won’t stop drugs from entering the country and it would be a costly nightmare to build that would cause worse flooding and environmental catastrophes as migrants simply go around the border by boat, tunnel under it, or fly over it in a plane.
Furthermore, the American people have soundly rejected Trump’s wall by every measure according to recent polls.
A wall is simply not practical nor wanted, it’s just Trump desperately trying to make it look like his presidency is successful rather than the total disaster it has been since it began.
Featured Image: Screenshot
