Fact check: Breaking down the Chris Christie vs. Donald Trump argument over the border wall

By Daniel Dale, CNN

Washington (CNN) — Two Republican presidential candidates, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former President Donald Trump, are accusing each other of making false claims about Trump’s wall on the border with Mexico.

Christie tweeted Saturday that, contrary to Trump’s signature campaign promise to get Mexico to pay for the wall, “Mexico didn’t pay for any of it. Not one damn peso.” Trump claimed in a Saturday speech that he kept his promise: “Remember this. Remember this. I said, ‘Mexico is gonna pay for it some way.’ They gave us 28,000 soldiers free of charge. That’s more than any wall.” And Trump reiterated in a Sunday interview on Fox: “Mexico did pay. They gave me, free of charge, 28,000 soldiers.”

Christie also tweeted that Trump “only built 47 miles of new wall,” citing US Customs and Border Protection as his source. Trump responded in the Fox interview that federal authorities have actually confirmed that he “built over 500 miles of wall.”

Facts First: Christie is right and Trump is wrong about Mexico’s nonexistent role in paying for the border wall. The wall was entirely paid for by the US government, and Trump failed to fulfill his unequivocal campaign promise to get Mexico to pay for “100%” of the project; he is rewriting history when he asks people to “remember” that he said Mexico would merely pay in “some way.” The question of how many miles of wall were built is more complicated. The answer depends on which construction you decide to count – all of the barriers built under Trump, as Trump does, or only the barriers that were erected in spots where there had not been any barriers before, as Christie does.

Regardless, it is clear that Trump is not telling the truth when he claims, as he has on multiple occasions since leaving office, that he “finished” or “completed” the wall. He delivered a vaguer version of the claim in his Saturday speech, saying that, having built “almost 500 miles” of wall, “we completed that job” but he then decided “you know, we’re going to need some more, because people are coming around other areas.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Christie campaign spokesperson Karl Rickett said in an email: “This isn’t complicated at all. Trump promised a wall across the entire border. He promised Mexico would pay for it. Neither happened.”

Here are the facts.

Trump’s Mexico-will-pay promise was unequivocal

Trump repeatedly declared during his presidential campaign in 2015 and 2016 that Mexico would pay for the whole border wall. His rally speeches included no qualifiers or caveats about Mexico perhaps instead funding some alternative effort to deter migration.

“Here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to build the wall. Mexico is going to pay for the wall, a hundred percent – 100%,” Trump said in a July 2016 speech.

“We will build the wall, believe me. And who is going to pay for the wall?” he asked in a March 2016 speech; after the audience shouted “Mexico,” Trump said, “100%, folks. One hundred – I don’t mean like…99.2%, I mean 100%.” He scoffed at “lightweights” who said he couldn’t get Mexico to pay for the wall, saying, “I said 100% – not 99%. I said 100%.”

Those skeptics turned out to be right. Americans funded the wall. The Trump administration directed more than $16 billion toward the project – including about $6 billion directly appropriated by Congress and about $10 billion the administration repurposed from the Defense Department – before President Joe Biden halted construction upon taking office in 2021.

The final bill for the project is unclear; more than $4.7 billion of the former Defense Department money had not been spent at the time Trump left office. Regardless, it is clear that Mexico spent nothing at all on the project.

“The US government paid for what was built of Trump’s wall out of our own treasury. Mexico did not directly pay for any portion of the wall,” Theresa Cardinal Brown, an immigration and border expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, said in a Monday email.

During Trump’s presidency, he started talking about Mexico somehow paying “indirectly.” But that wasn’t what he said on the campaign trail.

Trump’s boast that Mexico “gave us 28,000 soldiers free of charge” refers to Mexico’s reported 2019 deployment of roughly 21,000 security personnel to thwart migrants heading to the US, about 6,500 near its southern border with Belize and Guatemala and about 15,000 near its northern border with the US. Mexico was seeking to prevent Trump from carrying out a threat to impose tariffs on key exports.

It’s unclear if the Mexican deployment ever approached Trump’s “28,000” figure. Whether or not it did, Mexico paying for this initiative – and assisting the US on migration in “many other ways,” as Brown noted – simply isn’t the same as Mexico paying for the wall.

Brown said: “Equating the two expenditures would seem to imply that the deployment of troops was equally as effective as the wall, but this too is unclear. The wall’s effectiveness in decreasing migration overall is not clear, since migration did increase even after the additional sections were built. It is also not clear whether Mexico’s deployment of troops would have had the same impact on migration whether or not the wall portions were also built.”

How many miles? Depends what you’re counting

When Christie says only 47 miles of “new wall” were built under Trump, he is referring solely to one category of wall construction – “primary” wall that was built in parts of the border where no barriers previously existed. (The final figure for that category is 52 miles, according to a federal report written two days after Trump left office and obtained by CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez; Christie’s “47 miles” figure is from the second-last federal report.)

When Trump says the true figure is “over 500 miles,” the former president is referring to the total of all wall construction during his presidency – and inflating it. The correct total number is 458 miles: the 52 miles we mentioned above, plus 33 miles of “secondary” wall that was built in spots where no barriers previously existed, plus another 373 miles of primary and secondary wall that was built to replace previous barriers the federal government says had become “dilapidated and/or outdated.”

While some Trump critics have scoffed at this replacement wall, the Trump-era construction was generally much more formidable than the older barriers it replaced, which were often designed to deter vehicles rather than people on foot. Washington Post reporter Nick Miroff tweeted in 2020: “As someone who has spent a lot of time lately in the shadow of the border wall, I need to puncture this notion that ‘replacement’ sections are ‘not new.’ There is really no comparison between vehicle barriers made from old rail ties and 30-foot bollards.”

So Trump is wrong to claim the total is “over 500 miles,” but it is fair for him to include replacement barrier in his total – and, if you’re being generous, to round the 458 miles of construction to “nearly 500 miles,” as he did in the Saturday speech. Ideally, both Christie and Trump would be clearer about what they are talking about: Christie that he is ignoring replacement barriers, Trump that he is including replacement barriers.

Trump did not finish the wall

Even if you do count all 458 miles, however, Trump’s post-presidency claim that he “finished” the wall – which he made in a CNN town hall in May and in other venues – is not true.

Total construction fell well short of the 1,000 miles Trump regularly said “we need” in 2015 and 2016. And when he left office, there were about 280 miles of the border where wall construction had been planned but not executed.

The US border with Mexico is more than 1,900 miles long. As Trump noted during his 2016 campaign, natural barriers make crossings difficult in some sections even without a wall. Still, by any reasonable definition, he didn’t complete the job.

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