Trump's border wall gets a GoFundMe campaign that's trying to raise $1 billion

President Trump has so far failed to secure funding for his long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, so now his most ardent supporters are trying to pay for it themselves.

Earlier this week, a GoFundMe campaign that aims to raise one billion dollars to, well, build that wall was launched. As of Thursday morning the campaign had raised $3.2 million dollars. That is, of course, far short of both the $1 billion goal and the amount Trump wanted for the wall ($5 billion) before he initially abandoned it in a fight with Democrats over a deal to avoid a partial government shutdown (Trump has since decided he won't sign any funding bill without money for the wall.)

But it's still an impressive sum in a short amount of time.

Image: Mashable screenshot

The campaign is the work of Brian Kolfage, a triple-amputee veteran who was awarded the Purple Heart for his service during the Iraq War. Speaking to the Washington Post, Kolfage said it arose out of his frustration over the partisan bickering about funding the wall. “It’s time to stop playing games with voters,” Kolfage said. “If we are told we’re getting something, make it happen.”

Kolfage's effort to use crowdsourcing to circumvent government inefficiency is, in theory, a laudable idea. But the logic he's using to support this campaign is less sound. On the campaign's page, Kolfage includes the unsourced quote, “If the 63 million people who voted for Trump each pledge $80, we can build the wall.” While that math checks out, it goes completely against the reason so many people supported Trump's idea for the wall in the first place: because, as Trump crowed on the campaign trail, he'd make Mexico pay for it.

And, yet, here are American taxpayers sinking their own money to complete a campaign promise that the candidate they backed, a self-proclaimed skilled negotiator, can't get done on his own. 

Second, Kolfage declares, "The government has accepted large private donations before, most recently a billionaire donated $7.5 Million to fund half of the Washington Monument repairs in 2012; this is no different."

That's true, but the claim that funding the wall is "no different" is far more subjective. Setting aside the astronomical difference in the actual amounts, the monument was made for repairs to a public structure that few would have refused. 

Meanwhile, the border wall is an incredibly divisive political issue that's brought into sharp focus America's internal debate about what our country's policy on asylum should be. This is, in fact, much, much different than a rich guy donating his own money to repair a monument to our generally beloved first president. 

That won't stop people from donating to this GoFundMe, of course. In the time it took me to write this story, over $100,000 had been added to the total. The amount will fall short, of course, as that's such a staggering amount to raise in $50 or $100 increments. Regardless of the finally total, though, this funding will do nothing to settle the debate over whether we should build this wall.

UPDATE: Dec. 20, 2018, 1:58 p.m. EST Updated to reflect Trump's decision to not sign a funding bill without border wall money.

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