Trump proposes making his border wall a military project because the Pentagon has a lot of money

(Image credit: Pool/Getty Images)

published 25 March 2018

President Trump in a series of tweets Sunday morning cast his border wall proposal as an issue of national security and suggested the military be involved in its construction because the Defense Department is flush with cash thanks to its 2018 and 2019 budgets:

In an earlier post Sunday referencing the supermarket attack in France this past week, the president intimated he specifically thinks the Islamic State is the source of the "enemy combatants pouring into our Country." And in a follow-up tweet, Trump said work on the wall "will start immediately." In reality, the $1.6 billion allotted to border barriers in the omnibus spending bill is only for maintenance and planning purposes, not new construction.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox