You may remember that we're going to get a Big, Beautiful Wall on our southern border. It will keep out the criminals and drugs, and Mexico will pay for it! Except now we know American taxpayers will pay for it, assuming it ever happens.

President Trump secured just $1.6 billion in border security funding in the last spending bill, well short of the $25 billion-plus needed to realize his signature campaign promise. It will primarily go towards a fence—which Trump specifically promised would not be a substitute for his Big, Beautiful Wall—and just $38 million is available for “border barrier planning and design.”

Trump is feeling the heat. Failure to build The Wall may be the one thing that causes The Base to desert him. (President Business Deals echoed this himself when he begged the President of Mexico not to say in public they won't pay.) Trump has responded by insisting the Pentagon should pay for The Wall out of its budget, which is not how any of this works. Apparently, his advisers even suggested a GoFundMe page.

With all this on his mind, Trump decided Wednesday to pivot to an old, reliable tactic: blatant public lies!

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Great briefing this afternoon on the start of our Southern Border WALL! pic.twitter.com/pmCNoxxlkH — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2018

As BuzzFeed swiftly informed us, these photos are from a different project—an effort to rebuild a '90s-era section of wall that began in 2009.

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These pictures are actually from a project, which started in 2009, to replace already-existing portions of a wall along Calexico, California https://t.co/asNjgDFsYR pic.twitter.com/jUk8dPlUfV — BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) March 28, 2018

Wait, 2009? Does that mean the project began under President Obama? It's a wonder Trump didn't go out there with a couple sticks of dynamite. The president even used photos that the San Diego Border Patrol office tweeted in February.

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A #BorderWall replacement project has begun near downtown #Calexico within #USBP #ElCentro Sector. 2.25 miles of old landing mat wall will be replaced with 30-foot high bollard style. Read: https://t.co/owC57XK2Dh pic.twitter.com/TAFqh3HPjv — CBP San Diego (@CBPSanDiego) February 23, 2018

While this work is certainly ongoing, it is not The Big, Beautiful Wall that Trump promised, and his tweet is at best a shameless mischaracterization. The Department of Homeland Security is still reviewing prototypes for his Wall, there is no funding in place to build it, and no new construction has started.

So Trump's strategy is to lie. He knows that, because of the echo chamber that is Fox News and talk radio and conservative digital outlets, many of his supporters will never even know his tweet was false. And even if they do, they probably won't care—he said he was building a wall, and here are pictures of a wall being built.

If you needed evidence this would all be put through the conservative infotainment machine, just look at Fox & Friends' coverage of the tweet:

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Securing our borders! President Trump tweets new photos of border wall progress pic.twitter.com/0XVkkMEOdC — FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) March 29, 2018

"Securing our borders!" The actual video piece clarifies that the project began in 2009 and isn't part of the president's border wall initiative, but somehow it is all rolled up into his agenda as an example of President Business Deals Getting Things Done. It's no wonder Trump lies more freely in public than any other figure in modern American history. There are no consequences.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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