I am unable to fathom the stupidity of Donald Trump and the people who support him. The case in point today is Trump’s Wall.

First, the smoke and mirrors. Trump claims he needs $5 billion to build his 30 foot high concrete wall along the whole Mexican border. The Homeland Security Administration says it would cost $21.6 billion. Senate Democrats commissioned a study and found the cost would be over $70 billion and annual maintenance would cost another $150 million. This figure includes buying millions of acres of private land for the wall. Expect the jack boot of an over reaching federal government to use eminent domain to force landowners to sell their property.

Next comes the lies. Trump claims Mexico will pay for his wall with proceeds from the US, Canada, Mexico trade pact that he has negotiated. This is untrue. Even if the trade pact is approved by Congress, there is absolutely no language dictating any funding for the wall. This is simply another Trump lie.

Finally comes the stupidity. Trump’s wall will fail to keep people out of the US. There are the obvious tried and true methods to circumvent the wall using ladders and ropes and tunneling underneath. There are also far easier ways.

Notice on the map that there are bodies of water on both the east and west coasts of Mexico. For any Trump supporters reading this, I will point out that boats can float on the water. If the boats have motors, they can travel quite quickly and safely. Also, not even Trump has  proposed building  walls along the US coast north of the Mexican border along the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean.

The above photo is of a south Texas beach. The wet stuff is the Gulf of Mexico. It is very easy to bring a small boat in close to land where immigrants can jump out and wade onto shore. I don’t have pictures of California shoreline, but I expect the same opportunities exist there.

Another alternative is farther north. Since 2016, Mexican citizens can enter Canada without a Visa. Canada has already noticed an uptick in Mexicans entering Canada and then walking across the border into the US. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/mexicans-crossing-us-canada-border-immigration-1.4760153 Build a wall on the Mexican border and this becomes a torrent.

A round trip ticket from Mexico City to Winnipeg, Canada costs $348 (arrival and departure mid-week in February). From the airport, they take a 200 mile bus ride to get close to the US border and then walk across a field to get to North Dakota and throw away their return flight ticket. This is a fraction of the cost and infinitely safer than paying smugglers to get across the Mexican border now.

The point of all this is so simple that even Trump supporters should be able to figure it out. If US taxpayers build an $70 billion wall on the Mexican border, Mexicans can either choose to fly over it or boat around it. Unless, of course, they choose more expensive or riskier alternatives like tunnels or ladders and ropes.

So, one might ask, “Why do we shut down a big chunk of our government and jeopardize the finances of hard working government workers to waste $70 billion to build  a wall that would be absolutely useless at keeping immigrants out of our country?”

The answer is that we have a mentally retarded president with an army of racist supporters who don’t bother looking at maps and seem incapable of thinking.