THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY

[Rootilda]

But Trump later denounced the project publicly, tweeting last month that “I disagreed with doing this very small (tiny) section of wall, in a tricky area, by a private group which raised money by ads. It was only done to make me look bad, and perhaps it now doesn’t even work. Should have been built like rest of Wall, 500 plus miles,” he said.

Trump on Thursday told reporters that he know nothing about the project, and never believed in a privately-financed barrier.

“I thought that was a project being done for showboating reasons," he said.

Trump’s tweet, however, is belied by actions his administration has taken to support the wall’s builder.
The administration gave Fisher the billion-dollar contract in May to build additional stretches of the wall in Arizona, despite a lawsuit around the South Texas project and an ongoing audit by the Pentagon’s inspector general of a previous border wall contract that is looking into possible “inappropriate influence.”

On Sunday, the congressman who called for the audit responded to the president’s tweet.

"The President isn’t telling the truth again. The Administration has awarded huge contracts to the same company, which is under Federal investigation, that built this fence,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., wrote in an email. “His Administration has also entertained outsourcing to private firms to get more mileage done before the election at the expense of proper oversight. There is no reason for construction to continue during a pandemic."