Mexico Won’t Pay For the Wall, They’ll Just Be Billed For It

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Donald Trump spent the morning tweeting about the passion of his supporters; Arnold Schwarzenegger’s lousy ratings on Celebrity Apprentice compared to “ratings machine DJT”; his meeting with Anna Wintour and an upcoming meeting with the Condé Nast editors; and the fact that Mexico won’t be paying for the wall after all.

Wait. What’s this about the wall? Well, Trump may have said “Mexico will pay for it” about a million times, but it turns out that if you look carefully at the back side of his “Contract With the American Voter,” he promises to introduce the End Illegal Immigration Act during his first hundred days. Here it is:

Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall.

So you see, he was perfectly clear about this all along. You just had to read the fine print. Congress will pay for the wall and then we’ll send Mexico a bill, payable on net 30 terms. This fits well with the Republican plan to “repeal and delay” on Obamacare. Apparently we’re going to delay everything except those tax cuts for the rich. Those will be passed post-haste. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re made retroactive to redress the rich for the suffering they’ve endured during Obama’s term in office.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate