How Much Would Trump’s Border Moat Cost?

The Americans who wanted Donald Trump to be president were attracted to an outsider businessman with out-of-the-box thinking. A person who built things. Weird things, like a barber chair on his yacht, 24-karat-gold seat belt buckles on his jet, and Melania Trump.

So this past spring, as he looked for a way to prevent immigrants from coming over the U.S. border with Mexico, the Great Simplifier latched onto an idea that was logical, obvious, and popular with world leaders, albeit eight centuries ago. As New York Times reporters Michael D. Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis wrote in their just-published book, Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration, the president had been sounding out advisers on “fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh.” Twitter exploded with laughter when this anecdote came out last week, and while others have moved on to cover Ukraine, impeachment, and some sketchy text messages, I decided to dig in and do some more extensive follow-up reporting when other news outlets started publishing what seemed like rather lowball numbers to me.