“I will build the best wall, the biggest, the strongest, not penetrable, they won’t be crawling over it, like giving it a little jump and they’re over the wall, it costs us trillions,” Trump told a reporter in April 2015. “And I’ll have Mexico pay for the wall. Because Mexico is screwing us so badly.”

Once he was a candidate, that was the riff. We’re going to build a giant, beautiful wall, and who’s going to pay for it? Mexico! His supporters would respond, to cheers.

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Fact-checkers repeatedly noted that this was not feasible, but one didn’t really need a fact-checker to make that assessment. A foreign country will willingly pay billions in costs for the United States to build something in our own territory? Seems like a stretch.

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But rational insistences that Trump’s plan to have Mexico pay were baseless simply seemed to encourage Trump. He’d insist that Mexico would pay, in no uncertain terms, and every time a Mexican leader pointed out that they wouldn’t, Trump would declare that the wall “just got 10 feet higher.” To more applause from his supporters.

That idea, though, encapsulated a central point of Trump’s candidacy. Bold, borderline-irrational rhetoric that had the effect of a haymaker, knocking opponents off balance. And he was swinging at an appealing target for his base: Mexico was to blame for many of America’s problems by dint of sending its people across our border. Forcing Mexico to pay for the wall was the insult to top the injury of cutting off their migration strategy. Again, none of this was a fair representation of reality, but that didn’t seem to be a central concern in 2016.

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At times, including after he took office, Trump tried to rationalize how he would make Mexico pay. Maybe it wouldn’t be a $15 billion check; maybe it would be tariffs on imports from Mexico, like avocados. There were a few problems with this, including that Americans would have to buy 25 billion avocados to make up the price of the wall — enough avocados to build a wall out of avocados the length of the 1,900-mile border that runs more than 160-feet in height. And, of course, those payments would mostly be coming from the Americans who were buying the tariffed products.

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In January, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that having Mexico pay for the wall was still the plan.

“I’ve also said Mexico’s got to pay for it — sometimes you know on occasion, I’d add who’s going to pay for it? Mexico. Well they will pay for it, okay?” Trump said. “There are many forms of payment. I could name 10 right now. There are many forms of payment, I didn’t say how.”

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Can you name one? He was asked.

“They can pay for it through, as an example, they can pay for it indirectly through NAFTA. Okay?” Trump replied. “You know, we make a good deal on NAFTA, say I’m going to take a small percentage of that money, and it’s going to go toward the wall. Guess what? Mexico’s paying.”

Last month, the White House announced a tentative new trade deal with Mexico. There are no apparent provisions that would count as Mexico paying for the wall.

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Forget Mexico: Trump’s even having trouble getting Congress to fund the wall, and his own party controls both chambers. He’s repeatedly called for more money to build the wall, fending off those lingering questions about Mexico’s role as he did so. But he doesn’t have much to show for it, despite his assurances to crowds at his rallies. He celebrated getting a $1.6 billion “down payment” on the wall in March, but a big chunk of that money goes to upgrading existing stretches of wall.

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On Thursday morning, Trump railed at the latest discussions on Capitol Hill, in which the Senate advanced a proposal that booted out additional wall funding until after the midterm elections. Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) appeared on “Fox and Friends” to rail against the decision (he joined a small minority in opposing the decision), and Trump was watching.

In tweets, he quoted Perdue, then adding:

Where will the money come from to build the wall?

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TRUMP RALLY CROWD: Mexico!

Apparently not. Apparently it comes down to the federal appropriations process, just as those fact-checkers kept pointing out.

In fact, the last time that Trump said Mexico would pay for the wall in an interview appears to have been in that Journal interview in January. The most recent time he has said it at all was in May, during a speech at a rally in Tennessee. A search of Trump’s comments and tweets in the database at Factba.se doesn’t turn up anything more recent than four months ago. And it’s been more than a year since he tweeted that Mexico would foot the bill.

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Again, the claim that Mexico would pay for the wall was a perfect bit of rhetoric for pre-presidency Trump. It focused on the purported scourge of immigration, it blamed Mexico for that problem, and it positioned Trump as a leader so strong that he could do the seemingly impossible: get another country to pay for something he wanted to do.

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And it was a good encapsulation of Trump, too, because that argument was obviously flawed and has proved to be unworkable, even while his assessment of the underlying issues was only somewhat nearer to reality.

Trump may seem to have given up on having Mexico pay for the wall, but that line has already served his purpose. And if past is precedent, he’ll probably roll it out again someday soon, just to stick his thumb in the eye of those who point out that his promise was never workable in the first place.