The United States Congress is currently embroiled in one of the most ridiculous debates in its history. The government is about to be shut down for lack of a routine spending bill because Donald Trump is afraid of his critics on Fox News. Seriously. He was fully prepared to sign the Continuing Resolution until Foxies like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Steve Doocy told him to keep his promise to shut the government down if he doesn't get funds to build his idiotic vanity border wall.

Setting aside the circus in Washington, Trump's dimwitted Deplorables are mounting their own independent effort to pay for the useless, ineffective wall. And unless they are all from south of the border, Trump is still reneging on his most prominent campaign promise to make Mexico pay for the concrete joke. The Trump cultists have embraced an effort to raise money themselves to finance the wall's construction. Their GoFundMe page for that purpose has already hit $6.2 million in just three days.

On the surface, that sounds pretty impressive. However, the numbers simply don't work. First of all, the wall is estimated to cost about $25 billion. The page has a goal of $1 billion. So they have raised only 0.6 percent of their goal, which is less than 0.002 percent of the actual cost. If they continue to take in donations at the current rate (which is highly unlikely), it will take them five hundred days to hit a billion. They would have to have 16.4 million people donating an average of $61.00. They can never reach the total cost of the wall which would be twenty-five times more.

For 2018, the top ten GoFundMe pages raised a total of $58 million for all ten pages. The top fundraiser was for Times Up, a legal defense fund for survivors of sexual assault and harassment. They raised $22 million from 21,000 donors. That's a far cry from a billion dollars or sixteen million donors. So the goal appears to be utterly unrealistic. And the page says they will refund all donations if they don't reach their goal. Which makes the whole project appear to be nothing more than a PR gimmick.

What's more, in the nearly unimaginable event that they reach their goal, what exactly do they intend to do with the money? They could donate it to the U.S. Treasury. However, they cannot earmark it for border wall building purposes. There is no government facility for citizens to offer to pay for specific federal infrastructure of any kind. If they simply turn it over to the Treasury, the government must spend it according to the legislation passed by Congress. The House of Representatives initiates all spending bills. That would be the House that Nancy Pelosi will be the Speaker of, and that is run by a Democratic majority. It's doubtful that they would allocate those funds for the Deplorables' wall.

Other than that, there is no plausible avenue for allocating those funds toward a border wall. They cannot build the wall with private resources and commercial builders. They couldn't secure the land to build on or the rights to construct international barriers. And yet, Trump's glassy-eyed followers continue to donate to this scam.

Somebody is probably making some money on the float (interest earned on the funds while being held for distribution). But none of this will result in a wall or a fence or even artistically designed steel slats (as Trump recently described his vision of the wall). And after wasting their time and money on this boondoggle, will they be willing to donate to Republican campaigns for 2020? We'll see.

In the meantime, a counter offer is being pursued in the form of a GoFundMe page to raise money for Ladders to Get Over Trump's Wall. They already have 25 percent of their more realistic $100,000 goal.

UPDATE: Media Matters is now reporting this about the border wall GoFundMe page: The guy behind the GoFundMe account for Trump’s border wall used a Facebook page network connected to fake news sites to boost his campaign. Brian Kolfage’s previous Facebook page network was banned for spammy behavior in October.