Trump’s misleading “border wall” narrative | The Fact Checker

President Trump has repeated the claim that his administration is building a wall along the border more than 200 times since assuming office. But the consistent flow of video and photos the president tweets of the wall’s progress and what’s actually going on at the border are very different. During the 2016 election Trump pledged to build a wall along the border, which is almost 2,000 miles long. Then he said the wall would be 1,000 miles to cover half of the border, with natural barriers taking care of the rest. That estimate dropped to 500 miles by the 2020 election. In reality, by Sept. of 2019, funding had only been approved for roughly 260 miles of replacement barriers. As of Sept. 19, 2019, approximately 66 miles of old fencing had been replaced with a new barrier. Trump said he would built a wall out of concrete, then he switched to steel. Despite an evolution in the promised wall, Trump’s rhetoric has stayed consistent. For months, he has tweeted images a