Trump asked the Pentagon to explore trench on the border, Pentagon advised against it
Source: CNN
(CNN)The Pentagon pushed back against President Donald Trump's request to construct a trench along the US-Mexico border to stop illegal border crossings, according to a letter obtained by CNN. "USACE determined that construction of an unreinforced 30' x 30' trench, while a deterrent, would take three to five times longer and cost approximately 20 percent more to emplace than other available options," Mark Esper wrote to Trump, referring to the US Army Corps of Engineers. Esper at the time was serving as the Secretary of the Army. The memo was signed June 26, 2018, and sent to the President, according to a defense official.
Trump made the border wall the cornerstone of his 2016 presidential campaign, pledging to construct additional barriers along the southern border. The request mentioned in Esper's letter appears to have been one of many ideas floated by the President amid frustrations over an influx of migrants at the southern border. Trump previously raised wanting to paint the wall black and include French-style doors, according to The Washington Post and confirmed by CNN.
The New York Times also previously reported that Trump considered a "water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate." Trump denied the report on Twitter, saying "I may be tough on Border Security, but not that tough. The press has gone Crazy. Fake News!"
Esper's letter to the President doesn't make mention of snakes or alligators, but it reveals how the Pentagon advised against the President's request to fortify the border with a trench. "Only about 100 miles of the total border has geological conditions favorable to excavating an unreinforced 30' x 30' trench," Esper, who Trump later tapped to be his Secretary of Defense, wrote. "While addressing these challenges can be overcome in one way of another, the overall cost of constructing the trench -- even with the most modern of machinery -- is extremely expensive, and the time it would take to complete it would likely take much longer than other options the USACE developed."
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/14/politics/esper-border-trench-estimate/index.html
Eliot Rosewater
(31,097 posts)Response to BumRushDaShow (Original post)
Chin music This message was self-deleted by its author.
C_U_L8R
(44,897 posts)Trump is a world class idiot.
underpants
(182,281 posts)Dig it
Iwasthere
(3,138 posts)Even elevation changes of 10 or 20 feet would make this impossible???
cstanleytech
(26,082 posts)as fuck idea for him to ask about it and that's saying something considering how stupid as fuck his wall idea was already.
BumRushDaShow
(127,322 posts)cstanleytech
(26,082 posts)underpants
(182,281 posts)Going back, how would the snakes an gators survive? They aren't just thing that exist. They eat - that's pretty much what they do. Other than making more of them.
BumRushDaShow
(127,322 posts)that we have fallen way down into the rabbit hole now!
underpants
(182,281 posts)Nunes and Jordan yesterday were akin to an acid trip of talk radio with inside "jokes", extrapolations, and wild loops around nonsense that you have to be fully indoctrinated to understand.
BumRushDaShow
(127,322 posts)We 'trippin'.
JohnnyRingo
(18,581 posts)"How can I monetize this?" What a stable genius.
Dig the ditch! Dig the ditch!!
tclambert
(11,080 posts)Filled with molten lava, patrolled by flying dragons.
TeamPooka
(24,156 posts)BHDem53
(1,059 posts)dalton99a
(81,073 posts)SWBTATTReg
(21,859 posts)A slew of House Democratic leaders called on White House senior adviser Stephen Miller to resign Thursday after a report that he promoted white nationalist ideas and championed xenophobic rhetoric through the conservative website Breitbart before the 2016 election.
The report, released Tuesday by the Southern Poverty Law Center, analyzed more than 900 emails Miller purportedly sent to former Breitbart writer Katie McHugh in 2015 and 2016. The reports author said that after reviewing the emails which were provided to the SPLC by McHugh he was unable to find any examples of Miller writing sympathetically or even in neutral tones about any person who is nonwhite or foreign-born.
...
This person is literally, a pathetic human being.