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

President Trump has repeated the claim that his administration is building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico 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 U.S.-Mexico 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 and video of the border wall to support a favorable but not fully accurate narrative. He misrepresents unaltered video changing the details around the video to make it seem like the initial wall he promised is being built now. The Fact Checker investigates Trump’s visuals and the rhetoric behind them. Explore the Fact Checker's guide to manipulated videoRead moreSubscribe to The Washington Post on YouTube