Not that wall, this wall

Meanwhile Trump is also abusing his power by trying to muscle the Army Corps of Engineers to buy its new border wall from a company he favors because he’s a corrupt mob boss.

The Post reports:

In phone calls, White House meetings and conversations aboard Air Force One during the past several months, Trump has aggressively pushed Dickinson, N.D.-based Fisher Industries to Department of Homeland Security leaders and Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, the commanding general of the Army Corps, according to the administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal discussions.

It may be a not-very-subtle sign of the frustration in the Army that the news leaked to the Post the same day that Trump called General Mark Milley, the Army chief of staff, to the White House and once again pressed him.

Is Fisher good at Wall though? Is it a leading expert when it comes to Wall?

Fisher is a curious choice. The company is already suing the government after being rejected for any Army Corps contract for the border wall. Fisher was one of the companies that participated in a prototype exercise outside of San Diego in 2017, but the company’s wall didn’t meet the specifications laid out by the Department of Homeland Security, which wanted a wall through which agents could see.

Interjection: a wall agents could see through. The “rule” against ending a sentence with a preposition is a bogus rule and it often produces clumsy obscure phrasing like that.

Instead, Fisher pushed a more expensive concrete wall, similar to the one that Trump promised during the 2016 presidential campaign. But the Fisher prototype was late and over budget. CEO Tommy Fisher criticized the steel-bollard design that the government chose. Now, Fisher is promising a steel wall, and it says it can build it cheaper and faster than any other contractor.

Fisher Industries has some assets, though. Tommy Fisher is a major GOP donor. He has North Dakota’s Republican Senator Kevin Cramer in his corner. He’s already working on a private-sector attempt to build a barrier on private land in New Mexico, which is backed by close Trump allies like Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist; Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; and Kris Kobach, the former vice chair of Trump’s voter-fraud commission, who was under consideration as his “immigration czar.”

Moreover, Tommy Fisher has wisely made himself a fixture on Fox News, which the president watches obsessively. He’s used those appearances to pitch his company’s plan.

throws up hands in disgust

One Response to “Not that wall, this wall”