Donald Trump says the wall he plans on building along the U.S./Mexico border cannot be climbed, but professional climbers say that was a lie.
Trump has been promising that the more than $10 million per linear mile-wall will be a barrier that is “virtually impenetrable.” Trump is so confident that he’s willing to bet the world’s greatest rock climbers can’t climb it.
“We have, I guess you could say, world-class mountain climbers. We got climbers,” Trump said, as he stood beside a newly finished section of the barrier in Otay Mesa, California, which tops heights of 30 feet. “We had 20 mountain climbers. That’s all they do—they love to climb mountains. They can have it. Me, I don’t want to climb mountains. But they’re very good, and some of them were champions. And we gave them different prototypes of walls, and this was the one that was hardest to climb,” he told reporters on Wednesday. Trump boasted that “this wall can’t be climbed.”
However, the gag is, the country’s best climbers are calling BS on Trump’s claims. “That’s preposterous,” said Maya Madere, a sophomore at Stanford University who is the fifth-ranked woman boulderer in the nation. “Trump is full of shit, as usual.”
“I have never heard of any climbers ever being recruited to try and climb a border wall,” said Jesse Grupper, who won the gold medal in the men’s sport lead category of this year’s USA Climbing Sport & Speed Open National Championships. “I absolutely have not heard of anyone testing sections of border wall,” said Kyra Condie, who currently ranks second among the nation’s women boulderers and is considered a serious contender for the U.S. team when the sport makes its Olympic debut in Tokyo next year. “It would even be hard to find any of us willing to do anything to help Trump and his efforts in any way.”
Trump has yet to name or provide any details on who or what scaled the wall. The Daily Beast reports, the new barrier section is designed to absorb heat to deter immigrants from touching it—“you can fry an egg on that wall,” Trump said referring to the Otay Mesa border wall on Wednesday. The wall costs $147 million.
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