President Trump claims he was kidding when he told an audience at a shale conference in Pittsburgh on Wednesday that his administration is building a wall in Colorado. Mr. Trump made the comments while talking about border security.
It was not immediately clear what the president meant when he made the remark, given that Colorado is clearly not a border state. Mr. Trump tried to clear up his comments in a tweet at 12:20 a.m. Thursday.
“(Kiddingly) We’re building a Wall in Colorado”(then stated, “we’re not building a Wall in Kansas but they get the benefit of the Wall we’re building on the Border”) referred to people in the very packed auditorium, from Colorado & Kansas, getting the benefit of the Border Wall!” Mr. Trump wrote.
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But it wasn’t clear when Mr. Trump delivered the comments that he was kidding.
“You know why we’re going to New Mexico? Because they want safety on their border. And they didn’t have it,” the president said during his Pennsylvania speech. “And we’re building a wall on the border of New Mexico. And we’re building a wall in Colorado. We’re building a beautiful wall, a big one that really works — you can’t get over, you can’t get under. And we’re building a wall in Texas. And we’re not building a wall in Kansas, but they get the benefit of the walls that were just mentioned. And Louisiana’s incredible.”
Mr. Trump’s acting chief of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, Mark Morgan, admitted during a press conference at the White House earlier this month that none of the 71 new miles of border wall the administration has built are new “linear miles.” That means the administration is thus far replacing existing barricades or wall instead of adding wall in places where no barricade or wall existed. The Trump administration aims to build more than 400 miles of border wall by the end of 2020, particularly given that building a wall is a central message of the president’s reelection campaign.
