During a White House event on Tuesday, President Trump said that while construction of his border wall has already “started up in San Diego,” he plans to “ask for an increase in wall spending so we can finish it quicker.”

Those comments came a day after the president claimed during a rally in South Carolina that the wall “is happening.”

“Oh, it’s happening. It’s happening. It’s not ‘build that wall’ it’s ‘continue building that wall,'” Trump said. “We’re building it. We’re building it.”

Those comments came hours after Trump claimed “we must continue to BUILD THE WALL” on Twitter.

….If this is done, illegal immigration will be stopped in it’s tracks – and at very little, by comparison, cost. This is the only real answer – and we must continue to BUILD THE WALL! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2018

That tweet wasn’t the first time in June that Trump claimed construction on the wall has started.

Separating families at the Border is the fault of bad legislation passed by the Democrats. Border Security laws should be changed but the Dems can’t get their act together! Started the Wall. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2018

During a speech on Saturday in Las Vegas, Trump claimed “going to have the wall and we have started it.”

Last week in Duluth, Trump said, “we will have the greatest borders, the greatest walls. We have already started.”

Going all the way back to April, Trump has been in the habit of claiming that taxpayer-funded construction of the wall he promised Mexico would pay for has already started.

There’s just one problem — he’s lying.

Congress has in fact appropriated no money for Trump’s wall. Democrats were willing to give Trump up to $3 billion on border security measures last winter, but Trump wouldn’t take yes for an answer. Instead, he refused any deal that included less than $20 billion in multi-year wall funding (in addition to rollbacks on legal immigration) as part of an omnibus immigration bill.

A spending bill signed by Trump in March contained $1.6 billion on border security measures, but that money is only available for fencing and improvement to existing barriers — not to build the wall prototypes Trump made a big show of inspecting in March.


With no money appropriated by Congress, Rep. Diane Black (R-TN) recently floated the idea of introducing legislation to crowdfund Trump’s wall. The president, however, seems to have other ideas.

At the end of Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, Trump was asked “if building a wall is worth a shutdown” when the government needs to pass another spending bill in late September.

“I don’t know — we’ll see,” Trump replied.