According to an internal report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security seen by Reuters, the wall that President Donald Trump has been squawking about building for over 18 months will be really, really fucking expensive.
The report obtained by Reuters will be presented to Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly in the next few days and outlines a “series of fences and walls” that will reportedly cost $21.6 billion and take three and a half years to complete. That number is way more than the $12-15 billion estimate that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell cited in January and double the estimated $10 billion that Trump himself stated.
Building this wall would be a drawn-out affair that would likely be met with legal battles along the way, something that the $21.6 billion price tag does not account for, Reuters reports. Also, the report doesn’t take into consideration things like, uh, mountains, which can’t exactly be moved.
Here’s where some of the money might come from, since Mexico has no intention of paying for it, despite Trump’s insistent bleating that they do so:
The report assumes DHS would get funding from Congress by April or May, giving the department sufficient time to secure contractors and begin construction by September. Trump has said Congress should fund the wall upfront, but that Mexico will reimburse U.S. taxpayers. Mexico has said it will not pay.
Also alarming: The government has reportedly been seeking waivers to skirt environmental laws and restrictions for building on some of the ground the wall would cover. Further complicating matters is the fact that the government would have to battle in court to purchase some of the private land that the proposed wall would cover, Reuters reports. Once again, the $21.6 billion doesn’t seem to cover the possible legal battles that pursuing this wall would create.
The Hill reports that despite these very obvious obstacles to getting this stupid thing up and running, Trump’s confidence in his whackadoodle plan to rid the United States of “bad hombres” via a fucking wall is rock-solid. In a meeting with law enforcement officials Wednesday, the President said “The wall is getting designed right now. A lot of people say, oh, oh, Trump was only kidding with the wall. I wasn’t kidding. I don’t kid. I don’t kid.”