Steel prototype for border wall shown with slats cut out by a saw

Donald Trump has promised a “big, beautiful wall.” He’s said that “it’s going to be impenetrable, it will be a real wall.” Just last Friday he said that “A see-through wall made out of steel is far stronger than a concrete wall.” Funny, because NBC News has pictures showing that a prototype of the steel wall can be sawed through. Not just the steel, though: According to a Department of Homeland Security report, all of the wall prototypes can be breached.

No problem, says a DHS spokesperson. The final version of the wall will be even stronger, but anyway, the point of a wall is not to actually stop people:

The professionals on the border know that a wall system is intended not only to prevent entry, it is intended to defer and to increase the amount of time and effort it takes for one to enter so that we can respond with limited border patrol agents. Even a wall that is being breached is a valuable tool in that it allows us to respond to the attempted illegal entry.

That’s, uh, not what Trump said. “Impenetrable” is the word he used, repeatedly. And “impenetrable” does not mean “getting through it will slow people down enough for border patrol to catch them.”

If this whole issue was really about a wall, this would sure be a problem moment for Trump. Of course, it’s not about a wall—it’s about servicing Trump’s obsessions and creating division and fear and hate and giving Trump’s fan base another reason to believe he’s fighting for them by “hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”