President Donald Trump assured a crowd in Alabama Friday night that “the wall is happening.”
While speaking on behalf of Alabama Republican Senate candidate Luther Strange, Trump touted his proposal for a wall on the United States’ southern border.
Here’s some of the more notable comments the President made during his speech regarding the construction of the wall:
Transparent
Criticizing the inability to see across the border that comes with a concrete wall, Trump said the new design needs to be transparent.
“If you can’t have vision through it, you don’t know whose on the other side,” he said.
“You need to have a great wall, but it has to be see-through,” Trump said. “We’re looking at different samples already of see-through walls. And, I think also, to be honest with you, a see-through wall would look better.”
“I’m going to out and look at them personally, going to pick the right one,” he added.
Not a full wall
Trump noted that a wall extending across the entire border is not necessary.
“You don’t need it all the way,” Trump said, adding, “We are going to have as much wall as we need.”
“You have a lot of natural barriers, et cetera. Somebody said, ‘Well, what are you going to do, you going to build that wall in the middle of the river? … That nobody can go in? Are you going to build that wall on the mountain?’ I said, ‘You don’t need the wall on the mountain. You have a mountain which is a wall.’ But we are going to build a wall. It is coming along great,” Trump said.
Renovations
Trump referenced parts of a wall that are already built and said they were working to renovate those areas.
“We have the wall up there now, and we’re renovating it already,” Trump said they are making it, “pristine,” “perfect,” and “just as good as new.”
“Though, we may go a little higher than that. But, that’s OK,” Trump added.
Stopping drugs
One of the goals of the wall, Trump reiterated, is to curb the flow of drugs into the country.
“They take drugs, literally, and they throw it. A hundred pounds of drugs, they throw it over the wall. They have catapults. They throw it over the wall, and it lands and it hit somebody on the head. You don’t even know they’re there. Believe it or not, this is the kind of stuff that happens,” Trump said.
Responding to reports about a wall
Trump also set the record straight that he still intended to build a wall, despite what might be reported in the media.
“Well every once in a while you hear, ‘Well, you know, he doesn’t really want to build the wall,’ I say, ‘Excuse me?’ That is the great thing about Twitter,” Trump said. “You know, when the press is dishonest, which is most of the time, and when they say, like, I don’t want to build a wall, I can tweet that was a false story.”