Day 753: Trump to get nominal border wall funding. At this rate, wall won’t be done until he’s 113-years-old.

Donald Trump has routinely pivoted on his dream border wall: it would be 50 feet high, span coast-to-coast, Mexico would pay for it by check, Mexico would pay by a shift in the trade deficit, it would pay for itself, it would be made of concrete, it would be made of steel, it would be transparent, it would be beautiful, it would be constructed very quickly, it would cover only certain areas, yada, yada, yada.

All the while, Democrats have never once claimed that no barriers are necessary, as Trump likes to allege via a straw man argument. In fact, there are man-made barriers — fencing and wall — that have been erected by previous administrations on both sides of the aisle.

Democrats have pointed out that Trump’s dream wall is a waste of money and silly endeavor. Most illegal immigrants are in the country by overstaying visas and most drugs and other contraband get into the U.S. through ports of entry. Walls be mounted by ladders — and as Trump admitted, a rope — and can be tunneled under, as Trump saw during a recent trip to the border.

Nevertheless, the substantial financial demands continued to come from Trump, leading to an unprecedented five-week government shutdown in December and January. Trump demanded $5.7 billion, which would be the first payment of many payments that would likely total $20 billion or more related to initial construction.

In a deal to avert another shutdown, Democrat and Republican leaders negotiated — without Trump — and compromised on $1.375 billion to be allocated for physical structures. This accounts for less than 24 percent of the initial $5.7 billion that Trump sought.

Considering the lack of funding that Trump got in his first two years in office, Trump is averaging less than a half a billion dollars per year in funding. At this pace, the wall will take more than 40 more years to complete.

Trump will claim that the funding is a massive victory based on his negotiation tactics. But the truth is the money agreed to — while Trump was kept away from the negotiation table entirely —is an amount that will placate him and allow the government to remain open. In turn, Democrats can show they negotiated in good faith while providing funding for specific areas where barriers need to be improved or expanded.

753 days in, 709 to go

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