SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- After Donald Trump admitted that American taxpayers, not the Mexican government, may be responsible for the costs of erecting a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, government officials noticed members of the president-elect’s transition team hiring day laborers from hardware store parking lots for a “massive construction project.”

The Mexico Wall: Trump’s Ozymandias

One of Donald Trump’s key campaign promises, although highly divisive, involved the construction of a massive wall along the border between the United States and Mexico. In a bold and repeated pledge, Trump has maintained that he will somehow force Mexico to pay for the installation. However, a new complication in this already fraught plan, based on overtures Trump’s transition team made to House Republicans, is that taxpayers, not Mexico, could front the bill. This breaks an important vow made by Trump. On Wednesday, just days before his inauguration, Trump sought to appease supporters with a plan to reduce costs through the use of cheap day laborers, which his teams will pick up at various hardware stores.

The wall initially seemed to be another farcical and emotionally charged stream of rhetoric during the campaign. However, Trump has aggressively drafted plans to make the effigy a reality,

Democrats raised concerns about the structure for its physical and symbolic significance as a monument to isolationism, xenophobia and hubris unseen since the days of the pharaohs. Conservatives also worried that such a barrier would hinder drug cartels from supplying the president-elect with the cocaine he needs to sustain 24-hour rants on Twitter and his favorably ambiguous oratory style. But Trump has vowed to move forward with the wall’s construction as a top priority.

The border security barrier would stand 55 feet in height and span approximately 1,989 miles. Interestingly, 1989 was the year another famous anti-immigration, or rather anti-emigration, wall came down in Europe. Unlike that structure, Trump’s barrier would embrace a more rational approach.

As the Washington Post noted: “We know it will be concrete, and we know that it will have a ‘big, beautiful door’ in it, so the ‘good ones’ came come on in.” The portal, a Trump engineering consultant explained, would provide access to non-criminal, non-rapey Mexicans who demonstrate the aptitude and attitude to integrate with American culture.

If Mexicans Can’t Pay for Wall, They’ll Build It

The appeal of the wall, to frightened white suburbanites and alt-right eugenicists, goes beyond the dismantling of America’s misguided melting pot -- the whole undertaking would be charged to Mexico.

But on January 6, CNN reported that to expedite the project’s implementation, slated for April, Trump would push to fund the wall through the appropriations process: “The move would break a key campaign promise when Trump repeatedly said he would force Mexico to pay for the construction of the wall along the border, though in October, Trump suggested for the first time that Mexico would reimburse the US for the cost of the wall.”

Trump then tweeted that the “dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!” The announcement essentially validated that Americans would, at least initially, be left holding the check -- a reversal that drew fire from conservatives, who have increasingly expressed regret for their decision to elect Trump. On Wednesday evening, the incoming president released a brief statement to pacify his disgruntled base.

“Until Mexico reimburses us, which they will, fantastically, and it’s going to be fantastic, just the way I defeated crooked Hillary and got a thousand bikers to attend my inauguration and how my father is brilliant, we’re going to ease the burden on American taxpayers,” Trump said. “I’m sending a fleet of trucks, fantastic trucks, with Trump-Pence decals, fantastic drivers behind all the wheels, I’m sending these Trump trucks to every Home Depot parking lot on the East Coast. Maybe the South, too. We’re going to pick up a bunch of day laborers, thousands of them, and hire them to handle the project. Mexico might not pay for the wall, but they’re sure as hell going to build it, on pennies to the dollar.”

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