TEHRAN, December 23 -An online fundraising campaign to finance US President Donald Trump’s controversial wall on the border with Mexico has surpassed $15 million, as a shutdown of the government continues over a rift between the Republican leader and Democratic lawmakers in Congress.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - “President Trump’s main campaign promise was to BUILD THE WALL. And as he’s followed through on just about every promise so far, this wall project needs to be completed still,” says the GoFundMe campaign.
As of Sunday, about 260,000 people had contributed to the crowdfunding campaign, dubbed “We the People Will Fund the Wall.”
Brian Kolfage, a veteran who started the fundraiser on December 6, said if all the 63 million voters who elected Trump in 2016 donated $80 each “we can build the wall.”
The goal of the campaign is to raise $1 billion, one-fifth of the funding Trump asked lawmakers for building the border wall.
The government went into a partial shutdown on Friday after Republican senators failed to gain the votes needed to approve $5 billion for Trump's proposed border wall in next year’s budget.
The shutdown was the latest evidence of dysfunction in Washington and does not bode well for next year, when Democrats will have a stronger hand as they take control of the House of Representatives.
Trump made a wall along the US-Mexican border to combat illegal immigration and drug trafficking a key election campaign promise in the 2016 election. He also sees it as a winning issue for his 2020 re-election campaign.
Democrats oppose the wall, calling it unnecessary and ineffective.
It is not clear how the fundraiser money will be used to build Trump’s wall. Kolfage said he had already contacted the Trump administration to establish a way.
The campaign organizer said there were also two Republican lawmakers in the House trying to introduce legislation that would allow the government to accept the donations.
He even said a law firm was being contracted to make sure that the government would use the money “for the border wall itself, nothing else.”
Trump said during the campaign that Mexico will pay for the wall.
Doubling down on that point, Trump said Wednesday the funding for the wall was indeed coming from the USMCA, a new trade deal he struck with Mexico and Canada earlier this year to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.
“Mexico is paying (indirectly) for the Wall through the new USMCA, the replacement for NAFTA! Far more money coming to the U.S. Because of the tremendous dangers at the Border, including large scale criminal and drug inflow, the United States Military will build the Wall!,” he tweeted.
Source: Press TV
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