John Oliver is back with his wildly successful Donald Trump rants. This time it’s to discuss Trump’s border wall.
Joking aside, “the border wall is one of the few proposals Trump has talked about in detail.” So, “instead of mocking it or dismissing it out of hand,” Oliver analyzed “a serious proposal taken by a serious presidential candidate seriously.”
If Trump could build the wall for a fraction of the projected cost, that would be “an insane magic trick.” He keeps increasing the price estimate though, and his “margin of error is the entire GDP of Moldova.”
Using his lowest estimate, initial costs go over Trump’s highest estimate, and keep increasing. The wall is “a big dumb thing that only gets more expensive over time,” and can be compared to owning a pet walrus.
Mexico will not only pay for the wall, but “they’re going to be happy about it.” Oliver sarcastically reminded Trump that “people love it when you make them pay for shit they don’t want.”
In making it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall, former president Vicente Fox swore in his second language. Oliver found that to be “the best part.”
Trump responded that “the wall just got 10 feet taller.” As Oliver pointed out, “things don’t get bigger just because you’re angry. If that were true, Alec Baldwin would be 100 feet by now.”
On the $58 billion trade deficit, Oliver explained that the money doesn’t belong to the Mexican government, but was earned by businesses. “It’s not lying around in some centralized Scrooge McDuck money bin, labeled ‘Dumb Americans’ Money: Do Not Spend on Border Fence.'”
Another issue is the wall’s location. Some stretches would be inland, affecting land owned by private citizens, Native American burial grounds, and would affect wildlife.
A wall can’t stop people from overstaying their visas or drug cartels. Undocumented immigrants could use ladders, or “maybe a rope,” as Trump admitted.
Oliver also addresses “racism and xenophobia.” On being “uncommonly clear” about the need to be protected from Mexicans, Trump sounds like a villager yelling about werewolves.
Oliver offers a counter proposal of using the $77 per person cost to buy every person in America a Palmer Waffle Iron. He admits it’s stupid, but not “significantly stupider” than Trump’s wall. The waffle iron plan:
Americans have a choice then if they want to be a country which “spends billions on an unpractical symbol of fear, or one that smells like breakfast.”
