The Great Wall of Trump

Today the northeast has a wall of snow. The weather professionals predicted it and it came. The Donald made many promises during his campaign and is now not providing information by the deadlines. He is the school yard bully that shouts a lot on the playground but in the classroom never has his homework or classwork. He hasn’t given us the cost or the coverage in his healthcare plan that was due 3 weeks ago, he hasn’t provided any proof to the wiretapping allegations and last Friday he was due to provide the specifications on the wall that he wants to build. Even the poor red necks who voted for him are now wondering what the hell did they do now that their health care would be gone.

The wall of snow makes me want to discuss the logistics of the wall of Trump. Will he splat his name on 2,000 miles of wall too? He didn’t do his homework so we don’t know. He tweets, watches cable TV and practices writing his signature on a lot of Whitehouse Executive Orders. He signed an order to Build the Wall To Keep America Safe.  The due date to submit wall plans was March 10^th that came and went. The only thing we do know is that Mexico said that they will never pay for any wall and that Trump already said the taxpayers will foot the cost of the thing. All very different information in the 50 days he has been in office that is the complete opposite of what he said while campaigning. So, we need to do some cost speculation ourselves.

We need the expert advice from architects, engineers, concrete guys and even designers to know what it should look like. In every speech Trump spoke about his great wall. In one speech during the Presidential Debates in Houston he gave us a hint of how tall it would be. He said that the wall would be “a heck of a lot taller” than the venue that he was speaking in. That ceiling was 80feet high.  So. Let’s assume that a heck of a lot is 100feet tall according to the Don’s measurements. Architect Andrew Tesoro says that is a fair interpretation of The Don’s statement. Structural Engineer Christine Hobson says that a 100foot wall needs posts to enter the earth at 2/3rds of that and would rig up pre-cast concrete panels which would probably be the cheapest way to go.  

Tim Dobrova a concrete provider says that would require about 200 million cubic yards of concrete. So let’s do some math. One cubic yard of concrete costs about $2,000 dollars. So, 200 million times $2,000 dollars equals $400 billion dollars just in supplies costs. When you add the cost of labor, excavation, pouring the concrete and   de-watering swampy areas the cost of creating this massive structure at $1 trillion dollars. Let’s add another trillion dollars to that to build a highway along the side of the wall because what good is a highway lately without a ugly wall alongside it.

It should take 724 years to build but we only have 3 years and 10 months of the Trump Administration to get the wall built. So we will need more laborers. So, 4,000 workers to build the highway and 8,000 workers to build the wall. The Great Wall of China resulted in 400,000 deaths of the people who worked on it. We should also account for some deaths on this project too. Hopefully we could keep the deaths down to about 100 people per month. So, do the math. 100 people times 4 years is about 4,800 dead laborers. That would be more than 1/3rd of the 12,000 people work force.

Donald said “this will be a big beautiful wall” so that is why we need a designer on the project too. Designer Robert Kaner suggested a rock climbing wall on the American side so we could look over it if we wanted to. Did anyone realize that Mexicans are great at building underground tunnels? I’m exhausted and need to gaze at the high wall of snow outside my window.