As demonstrated with a 1-year-old’s Duplo blocks.<\/b>
\nIn the broad, Platonic sense, President Trump\u2019s pledged border wall is what it always was: A wall, on the border with Mexico, for which Mexico will pay. In a specific sense, despite Trump\u2019s assertions to the contrary on Thursday morning, the composition of that wall has changed several times since he first proposed the idea, months before he ran for office.
Trump\u2019s insistence that the wall is the same now as it always was follows The Washington Post\u2019s report that White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly described Trump\u2019s description of the wall during the campaign was \u201cuninformed.\u201d
\u201cA concrete wall from sea to shining sea\u201d won\u2019t be constructed, Kelly, reportedly told a group of lawmakers. In some places, there would be a concrete wall, though that \u201cwould be good in only certain places.\u201d In other places, the terrain would obviate the need for a wall; in some places, aircraft and land patrols would suffice.
This argument clearly made Trump mad. During his morning executive time, he tweeted a rebuttal.
That\u2019s not exactly true. I went back over what Trump said about the wall during the campaign, finding that his proposals have changed in significant ways. And to illustrate, I\u2019ve commandeered my 1-year-old son\u2019s Duplo blocks.
April 2015
Months before he actually declared his candidacy, Trump spoke at a town hall in New Hampshire and answered a question about immigration with a description of his wall \u2014 for which Mexico cover the costs.
\u201cI will build the best wall, the biggest, the strongest, not penetrable, they won\u2019t be crawling over it, like giving it a little jump and they\u2019re over the wall, it costs us trillions,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I\u2019ll have Mexico pay for the wall. Because Mexico is screwing us so badly. I will take it from out of just a small fraction of the money they\u2019ve been screwing us for over the last number of years.\u201d
He didn\u2019t specify a height for the wall at that point. Let\u2019s start, though, with a wall that\u2019s 30 feet high. For scale, I\u2019ve included Duplo Man (who may have an actual name, I don\u2019t know), who for our purposes will be assumed to be 6 feet tall. (That\u2019s three inches shorter than Trump himself, according to his recently released physical.)
August 2015
Now a candidate, Trump offers some more specifics at a campaign event .
He wanted the wall to be beautiful, he said, \u201cbecause maybe someday they\u2019ll call it the Trump Wall. Maybe. So I have to make sure it\u2019s beautiful, right?\u201d
That\u2019s pretty clear: A concrete slab wall. An engineer mapped out what this would entail, finding that it would contain three times as much concrete as the Hoover Dam.
Later in August
Later that month, Trump first broached the idea that you wouldn\u2019t need to cover the whole length of the border.
October 2015
He addressed that issue in more detail during the third Republican primary debate.
\u201cThey built the Great Wall of China. That\u2019s 13,000 miles. Here, we actually need 1,000 because we have natural barriers,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we need 1,000.\u201d
This jibes with what Kelly told the lawmakers. In some places, mountains or rivers \u2014 or, in the case of our Duplo blocks, stacks of flowers \u2014 would by themselves prevent passage, so no wall would be necessary.
Trump went on.
\u201cWe can do it for $10 billion to $12 billion, and it\u2019s a real wall,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a wall that\u2019s a heck of a lot higher than the ceiling you\u2019re looking at.\u201d
Over the course of 2016, we tracked the ever-evolving height of Trump\u2019s wall. That included this comment, offered in the Moores Opera Center on the campus of the University of Houston. We called the university to find out how high the ceiling of the facility was, learning that it was 45 feet high.
A \u201check of a lot higher\u201d than that we pegged at 55 feet. Here\u2019s how tall that would be, using up all of my son\u2019s two-by-two Duplos.
But that height, too, was short-lived.
February 2016
Trump ups the ante during a campaign rally.
\u201cI get a call from one of the reporters yesterday, and they said, \u2018The President of Mexico said they will not under any circumstances pay for the wall,\u2019 \u201d he told the crowd. \u201cThey said to me, \u2018What is your comment?\u2019 I said, \u2018The wall just got 10 feet higher.\u2019\u201d
I don\u2019t have the Duplo blocks to show how high that would be.
June 2017
Trump starts digging into the details, proposing to a crowd in Iowa a wall that would not need Mexico\u2019s money because it might pay for itself.
This idea soon gets scrapped. Which is a good thing if only because the depiction of solar panels in plastic blocks is tricky. This is the best I could come up with.
July 2017
Trump suddenly introduces a new component: The wall must be see-through so that people aren\u2019t crushed by flying bags of drugs.
I talked to experts who offered an important reassurance. People can\u2019t throw 60-pound bags over 50-foot walls. If they used medieval siege weaponry, though, the picture changes.
Anyway. Our wall now looks like this.
That, then, is the current manifestation of the wall. But why did Trump suddenly advocate the addition of windows?
January 2018
He explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.
There you go. He also argued that adding windows was cheaper than adding cameras.
\u201cNow on the wall we have cameras and we have highly sophisticated equipment, but the wall \u2014 the Border Patrol tells me the other way\u2019s more expensive,\u201d he told the Journal. \u201cIt\u2019s not less expensive. We have to have vision through the wall. This is going to be state-of-the-art wall; this will be state of the art. But, I can fully understand why you\u2019d have to have vision. I\u2019d like to be able to see three or four hundred yards instead of: We\u2019re at a wall \u2014 we have no idea who\u2019s on the other side.\u201d
How additional agents positioned to look through those windows is cheaper than adding video monitoring systems isn\u2019t clear, though one can see how the Border Patrol might endorse that argument.
There is one aspect of the wall on which Trump hasn\u2019t budged, even as those around him \u2014 including Kelly in that meeting with lawmakers \u2014 have acknowledged the impossibility of the proposal.
Mexico, Trump continues to insist, will pay for the wall. Another tweet from Thursday morning.
If you are curious, Duplo blocks are not manufactured in Mexico. They are made in Hungary.<\/p>\n

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