- The piece discusses Trump's border wall, which was a key promise of his campaign.
- The wall has been criticized for being expensive and pointless.
- Steve Bannon and others were arrested for defrauding people in a scheme to raise money for the wall.
- The wall prototypes were deemed vulnerable and ineffective.
- The design chosen was a wall of slats topped by a metal anti-climbing plate.
- The wall is climbable and has caused problems for animals and landowners.
- The wall is costing a lot of money, with taxpayer funds being diverted from other important projects.
- Senator Lindsey Graham justified the diversion of funds by saying it's better for middle school kids to have a secure border.

- The video criticizes Trump's national emergency declaration and his vanity project of building a wall.
- The company Fisher Sand and Gravel, known for currying favor with Trump, was added to the list of pre-approved bidders for the wall despite red flags.
- Fisher's company has faced lawsuits, tax fraud accusations, and numerous violation notices.
- The company also partnered with the non-profit organization We Build the Wall, which led to the arrest of Steve Bannon for misappropriation of funds.
- Trump has tried to distance himself from We Build the Wall, but evidence suggests his support.
- Despite raising $25 million, We Build the Wall's construction projects have faced issues, including erosion and potential collapse.
- The Trump administration is accelerating its border wall efforts, using eminent domain and waiving legal requirements.
- Native American communities have been adversely affected by the construction.

- The speaker criticizes Trump for tear-gassing people and holding a Bible outside a church.
- They mention that the devastation caused by the wall was predicted.
- The speaker sarcastically mentions other things they predicted, like celebrity breakups and plot twists.
- They argue that the wall is not functional and is more of a monument to Trump's ego.
- Trump's obsession with his legacy is highlighted, including his desire to be added to Mount Rushmore.
- The wall is described as emblematic of Trump's presidency, being destructive, pointless, ineffective, racist, and causing long-term damage.

The text discusses Trump's border wall and its criticisms, including its cost and effectiveness. It mentions the arrest of Steve Bannon for defrauding people in a scheme to raise money for the wall. The chosen design of the wall is described as vulnerable and ineffective. The wall is causing problems for animals and landowners and is diverting taxpayer funds from other important projects. The text criticizes Trump's national emergency declaration and his association with Fisher Sand and Gravel, a company with a questionable reputation. The construction of the wall has negatively impacted Native American communities. The speaker criticizes Trump for tear-gassing people and holding a Bible outside a church. They argue that the wall is more of a monument to Trump's ego and is emblematic of his destructive and racist presidency.

Nearing the 2020 election, John Oliver checks in on one of the key promises of President Trump’s 2016 campaign: the border wall. 

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For our main story tonight, we thought we'd look at the border wall.

1 of the more upsetting things to emerge from 2016, tied, of course, with the reboot of The Gilmore Girls.

Now, I know I'm a little bit late with this, but just a few notes.

4, when did both of these women forget how to hold mugs?

5, I'm sorry, Emily says bullshit and tits now?

And finally, who the absolute fuck was Paul?

That aside, you no doubt remember that Trump's border wall was the key promise of his first campaign.

He talked about it constantly, even managing to inadvertently point out key flaws in the idea, like this.

If they ever get up there, they're in trouble.

That was Trump recognizing in real time that his signature plan could be completely undone by thick string.

And if that clip is familiar at all to you, it might be because we played it in our first piece on the wall 4 years ago, when I was approximately 50 years younger.

And in that show, we discussed how the wall seemed, in addition to being transparently racist, like it was gonna be both expensive and pointless.

Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but Trump is actually president now.

And has spent the last 3 and a half years putting his plan into action.

In fact, just before the pandemic, he was reassuring attendees at 1 of his rallies that things were going great.

We'll soon be building many, many miles a week, but we're up

That sounds less like a description of border fencing and more like the name of an off-brand play set recalled because it collapsed on a bunch of small children.

Listen to me, do not buy the super-duper wall, unless you want to wind up with a pile of cracked fiberglass and a flattened toddler.

But clearly, the wall is by no means super-duper.

And while we predicted the whole thing would be a shambles, the extent to which that's been true, even we didn't see coming.

Steve Bannon and 3 others are accused of defrauding hundreds of thousands of people by personally profiting off a scheme to raise money to help build President Trump's border wall.

Yeah, Steve Bannon, the president's former chief strategist, was arrested, which is 1 of those things that you knew would eventually happen, but are pleasantly surprised that it happened so soon.

Like Jennifer Lawrence's Oscar win, or Roger Ailes' death.

And the story behind that arrest is absolutely fascinating, And I promise that we'll get into it later in this piece.

But we thought that tonight, especially ahead of the RNC next week, it'd be a good time to give you an update on the status of Trump's border wall.

Because before he took office, he wanted it to define him as a president.

And that has very much happened, but in none of the ways that he intended.

So, let's try and break down a few things.

What he's built, what damage it's done, and crucially, who's been doing some of the building.

And let's start with what exactly he has built.

Because from the start, Trump insisted that he wanted a concrete wall.

Something that many border patrol agents had advised him against because it would block their view of what was going on behind it.

Yet Trump was still so insistent on it that less than a year into his term, this happened.

President Trump said he wanted a big, fat, beautiful wall.

1 of these 8 contestants could soon stretch across the border.

There's a chance that 1 of them gets selected, 8 of them get selected, or a mix of their characteristics that get selected for construction.

Yeah, Trump essentially organized a wall pageant.

And look, if you're gonna hold a weird contest in the middle of the desert, at least make it Saudi Arabia's actual beauty pageant for camels.

A real annual event where the hottest camels are evaluated on the fullness of their lips, how gracefully they walk, and the size of their humps.

And you might be thinking, wow, it's pretty problematic to objectify camels like that.

But the fact is, this contest is actually 1 of the biggest scholarship opportunities that they have.

And do you really think now is the time to argue that we need fewer camels in STEM?

8 prototypes were built so they could test them to figure out which would work best, and it didn't go well.

A government report found every mock-up was deemed vulnerable to at least 1 breaching technique, with 1 having the potential to impact the structural integrity of the entire mock-up, which is ridiculous.

We all know the only wall that should be in danger of collapsing is the super-duper wall.

It will squish your child like a panini." So the design they ended up going with was a wall of slats or bollards topped by a metal anti-climbing plate.

And Trump did not like that design, reportedly telling officials he thinks it's ugly.

And I have to say, He's not actually wrong there.

I don't mean to wall shame, but if I had a list of hot walls, that 1 wouldn't even crack the top 30.

I think we all know how I feel about that.

Collapse on my chest, you impenetrable barrier.

Crush my ribcage, you load-bearing behemoth.

That's a hard pass from both me and the president.

Still, Trump insists that regardless of how this wall looks, the important thing is it works.

We actually built prototypes, and we have, I guess you could say, world-class mountain climbers.

Me, I don't want to climb mountains, but they're very good.

And some of them were champions, and we gave them different prototypes of walls, and this was the 1 that was hardest to climb.

Because there's no need for Trump to say, I don't want to climb mountains.

That was, and I cannot stress this enough, assumed.

If I knew nothing else about Donald Trump, based solely on his appearance, I'd immediately make 3 assumptions.

Bad knees, weird dick, doesn't want to climb mountains.

He's giving me information I already have.

Not just because nobody's been able to find those champion climbers, but also because of this.

President Trump has called these refurbished walls unclimbable.

But this video posted just yesterday on social media shows 2 men scaling a replaced portion of the wall in California.

You don't even need a rope if the wall can basically function as a fireman's pole.

So to recap what we've learned about walls so far, fuckable, definitely fuckable, and very much climbable.

The next question is, where exactly are we building it?

Well, as we pointed out in our first piece, finding places where you can build the wall is a bit of a challenge.

Under Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, hundreds of miles of border barrier had already been constructed.

A bunch of the rest of the border is already covered by natural barriers or is on private property.

So, what Trump did was start building in the places where it was easiest to do that.

Specifically, where barriers were already in place.

In fact, of the 275 miles of new wall that Trump has completed to date, only 5 miles are in locations where no barriers at all previously existed.

It might be tempting to think, oh, well, then he hasn't really done very much, has he?

But Trump's acting secretary of Homeland Security, a man named Chad Wolf, pushes back on that claim hard.

You put up what's behind us, That's not replacement wall.

I just, I don't, I don't agree with the assertion that we're simply replacing wall.

Okay, first, let's deal with the sheer Chad Wolfiness of this man.

If I lost all my memories and fell into a coma for 30 years, opened my eyes and saw him, the first words out of my mouth would be, you must be Chad Wolf.

He looks like a model for a knockoff Top Gun costume that you find at Party City called Top Flight Fast Pilot Costume USA.

He looks like his parents started with the name Chad Wolf and then just found a baby to match.

The replacement wall is a completely new physical infrastructure.

Here is the old barrier in a remote section of Arizona, and here is the new structure.

Claiming that they're the same because they're technically barriers is like claiming that John Cena and I are the same because we're the exact same age and we're both named John.

Sure, yeah, on paper, there are some similarities.

But when you compare the 2 side by side, 1 is gigantic and the other looks like it might collapse if you press on it too hard.

But crucially, these massive new barriers are causing significant problems, disrupting animals' migratory patterns and slicing up people's land.

If this is about stopping drugs or people from entering the country, it's worth remembering, most of that happens through our ports of entry.

And even the Department of Homeland Security's own inspector general issued a scathing report just last month saying the administration did not use a sound methodology to identify and prioritize investments in the areas along the border that would best benefit from physical barriers.

In other words, putting walls where we've been putting them just doesn't make sense.

And if you want to see just how nonsensical, new sections are currently going up along the top of these jagged mountains in a National Wildlife Refuge, which is just utterly insane.

Mexico, obviously, is not paying for the wall.

Instead, we are, and in the dumbest possible way.

So far, Trump has garnered 15 billion dollars of taxpayer money for the wall, but only 5000000000 of that was provided by Congress.

Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border so that he could tap into Pentagon accounts for the rest.

That redirection of funds diverted money that had been set aside for things like replacing an overcrowded middle school on a Kentucky military base, or repairing a daycare for service members' children, which reportedly suffered from sewage backups, flooding, mold, and pests.

And when asked to justify those decisions, Senator Lindsey Graham had a pretty amazing rationale.

Let's just say for a moment that he took some money out of the military construction budget.

I would say it's better for the middle school kids in Kentucky to have a secure border.

We'll get them the school they need, but right now we got a national emergency on our hands.

From the idea that Trump's national emergency declaration was justified, which it wasn't, to the idea that his vanity project is better for middle school kids than a new school, which it is not, to that tie, which looks like a candy cane that melted on his shirt.

It looks like the tie that Santa Claus wears to elf funerals.

It's the worst thing in that shot, which is really saying something, because that shot also includes Lindsey Graham.

And that brings us to our final question, who is building this?

Because the answers to that are actually a little surprising.

Just look at 1 of the companies that was invited to take part in that America's Next Top Wall in the Desert competition, Fisher Sand and Gravel.

The head of the company, Tommy Fisher, knows how to curry favor with Trump.

Here he is on Laura Ingraham's show, giving him the hard sell.

If he allows us to play and our team of Fisher Industries to play, I guarantee you no different than Tom Brady.

And if we don't perform, the president can fire us.

And that's how comfortable and confident I am is when people see what we really offer.

Not taking sides on which prototype is best, but this is why you're a good businessman.

I didn't think Laura Ingraham was capable of that level of delight, but it turns out her love language is white men begging for attention.

I'll win for your daddy, just like that Tom Brady you like.

And that was by no means Fisher's only appearance on Fox.

He went on the network 10 times to praise the president and sell his wall.

And these appearances seem to have had an effect.

Because while both DHS and the Army Corps of Engineers actually turned down Fisher's initial wall designs because they didn't meet operational requirements.

Fisher's company was nevertheless added to a small list of pre-approved bidders thanks to personal pressure from the president, who, according to 1 of the senators from Fisher's home state, liked Fisher because he'd seen him on television.

Trump's like a shut-in who sits at home all day and orders what he sees on Fox commercials, but instead of ordering Legends XL male enhancement pills, he picks companies to build a giant wall across the border.

But just as with Boner pills, you shouldn't just buy something because you saw it on TV.

You might want to at least Google it first, because Fisher's company had a lot of obvious red flags.

Fisher has been hit with lawsuits, 1 from the federal government for sexual discrimination in New Mexico.

The company and the founder's son were both accused of tax fraud in 2009.

The son pleaded guilty, the company paid more than a million in back taxes.

So they cheated to get ahead, got caught, and yet they're still around.

Turns out they really are the Tom Brady of the construction industry.

Because over the years, they've also racked up around 2,000 violation notices from city, county, state, and federal regulatory bodies, including 469 criminal charges for violations in Phoenix, where the company ran an asphalt plant.

Charges only reduced to civil penalties after Fisher agreed to permanently close it.

Local government officials have rejected their bids on contracts after considering, among other things, the fact that the former head of their family of companies, Fisher Industries, was convicted for child pornography.

And sexual harassment, tax fraud, federal violations, and child pornography is not a great list for a company vying to receive government money.

It's not even a great list for the Ozarks season 4 writers room.

Not even Jason Bateman can make those crimes likable.

And yet, Fisher was incredibly savvy about how to appeal to Trump, not just with his constant TV appearances, but also by hooking up with We Build the Wall.

That is the non-profit organization that led to Steve Bannon's arrest on Thursday.

It was founded by a veteran named Brian Colfage, and it took money from individual donors with a promise that it would build new sections of wall on private land.

It even had a fundraising wall-a-thon, featuring a star turn from a man calling himself Foreman Mike.

Put your name on it for eternity because you're not gonna last forever.

And if you can't do that, get yourself a brick.

It lasts forever as well with your name, your family, your girlfriend, whatever you want to put on it.

Okay, there's a lot to digest there, because despite what you may think, Foreman Mike is not a promo for a new WWE character whose signature move is the chaotic sales pitch.

In fact, he isn't even the foreman on the project, just as We Build the Wall Construction is not a real construction company.

He's just some guy they used to fundraise so he can grunt about personalized bricks, which I do admit are a great idea, because we all know the best way to deter someone who's crossing the border is for them to see the message to the 1 and only Kirsten, may our love be as strong as this wall.

And as ridiculous as that may seem, We Build the Wall raised 25 million dollars.

And yet, according to this week's indictment, quite a bit of that money wound up getting redirected back to Bannon and Colfage, who, along with others, worked together to misappropriate hundreds of thousands of dollars for their own personal benefits, with Bannon allegedly using money for personal uses and expenses, and Colfage allegedly spending funds on a luxury SUV, a golf cart, jewelry, and payments toward a boat.

And look, Bannon and Colfage deny those charges, but it definitely paints this moment from that Wall-a-thon in a very different light.

We're off the coast of Saint-Tropez in southern France, in the Mediterranean.

We're on the million-dollar yacht of Brian Kolfager.

And Brian Kolfager, he took all that money from Bill DeWalt.

No, we're actually in Sunderland Park, New Mexico.

Joking about stealing people's money is funny, because you know what they say, all great jokes have an element of truth in them.

Now, Trump was anxious this week to distance himself from We Build the Wall, saying, I know nothing about the project.

Which is a little hard to believe, because here's Colfage with Don Jr.

At an event where he described We Build the Wall as private enterprise at its finest.

And here's Trump ally, Chris Kobach, on the group's own YouTube page, being pretty unequivocal about where the president stood.

I was speaking with the president, and we were talking about a variety of issues, and, the topic came up.

I mentioned that I was working with We Build the Wall, and he said, well, you tell the people you are working with that this project has my blessing.

And he went further, and he said, I want the media to know that

I want the media to know that this project has my blessing.

He was really making a point that he was behind this.

I'm just surprised the Kobach didn't continue.

This president wanted you to know he's completely behind this war scam, until it fails, then you'll not be able to reach him and he won't have heard of you.

And look, to be fair, some of that $25 million they raised did go to construction.

Specifically, they say they gave around 10 million of it to Tommy Fish's company.

Most of it to build that private wall in New Mexico that you saw a guy named Mike banging with a hammer.

And that wall does appear to feature some personalized bricks, like this 1 that Carl Farge excitedly put on Instagram, which says, thick Latinas will not be deported.

The group also helped fund another Fisher wall built directly along the Rio Grande, which Fisher referred to as the Lamborghini of walls, claiming that it'll stand for 150 years, you mark my words.

Although, it seems to be conking out around 149 years ahead of schedule.

A ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation found erosion beneath the foundation of a stretch of wall in Texas.

That stretch was just built in January of this year by Fisher Sand and Gravel.

I'm just doing this with 1 hand, not even exerting myself.

Okay, so it turns out it really is the Lamborghini of walls, and that as soon as you get near it, the owner yells, hey, please don't touch that, it'll lose value and you could break it.

And while I have to tell you, Fisher's attorney has told reporters that erosion is a normal part of new construction, and that if there are issues that come up, we'll address it.

It seems there are issues fucking coming up, because experts have said it was concerning to see the level of erosion around the fence, and that segments of the structure could topple into the river if not fixed.

So to recap, Fisher Sand and Gravel is a company with a checkered past that partnered with a shady non-profit whose backers are now under indictment for skimming money for their own uses in order to have a foreman who's not the actual foreman help build a wall that looks like it may either collapse or get pushed over.

And if you know anything about this administration, it will not surprise you to learn that Fisher has now wound up with over 2000000000 dollars in border building contracts.

They're 1 of the biggest contractors the government has hired for this project.

And the thing is, should Trump be re-elected, all of this is only going to accelerate.

In fact, his administration seems to be stepping up its efforts, attempting to take private land by filing more eminent domain lawsuits during the pandemic than at any other time in his presidency.

And they're also using a provision tucked into the Real ID Act of 2005, giving the administration the power to waive all legal requirements necessary to construct the wall.

And that means it's not bound by environmental or cultural heritage protection laws, which has enabled them to plow through Native American communities with devastating effects.

Construction crews in Southern Arizona conducted controlled blasts earlier this year along Monument Hill.

The same day of the detonations in February, the Tohono O'odham tribe's chairman sat before

It's hard to see the blasting that you showed on the video today.

And by blasting and doing what we saw today, has totally disturbed...

As that man told Congress, for us, this is no different than DHS building a 30-foot wall along Arlington Cemetery or through the grounds of the National Cathedral.

And I would like to think that that's something Trump knows would be wrong, but who knows, given he had people tear-gassed so he could stand outside a church holding a Bible with an expression like, it just fucked his wife.

And the devastation caused by this wall was completely predictable.

I know that, because we literally predicted it.

And believe me, this is the last thing I wanted to say I told you so on.

I'd much rather have said that about the fact that I knew Pete and Ariana weren't gonna make it, or that a crockpot would be the killer on This Is Us.

Or the fact that I knew the Babadook was gay as soon as I saw him.

But even I didn't see some of this coming.

From the pointlessness of a beauty contest in the desert, all the way through a sketchy charity selling personalized bricks.

All of this was stupider than even I thought was possible.

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Border Wall II: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)