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Trump's wall blows over again! Viral video shows wall collapsing under Hurricane Hanna, but is the footage real?

A latest video has been doing the rounds showing a section of the big wall collapsing under the impact of Hurricane Hanna
PUBLISHED JUL 27, 2020
President Donald Trump (Getty Images)
President Donald Trump (Getty Images)

He has been vouching for the border wall with Mexico since his 2016 campaign for president. He has even shut down his own government temporarily to force his opponents to financially comply with his demand to build the wall, which is a key component of his mission to Make America Great Again. But on Sunday, July 26, the poll-bound president’s pride was smashed by Hurricane Hanna after a video showing a section of the wall collapsing under the weather's impact went viral. The video was posted by journalist Yadith Valdez. This isn't the first time the wall has been buffetted to breaking point. It collapsed in January too.

The latest video \became the subject of widespread ridicule as critics linked the mammoth structure’s collapse to the president’s struggling re-election bid. The Republican leader has already spent over $11 billion raising the wall and it has been estimated that more than $21 billion will be used up to complete the project.

Those targeting the structure’s collapse also pointed out that it was only a few weeks ago that Trump boasted the wall was the world’s “most powerful and comprehensive border wall structure”. There were also cynical respondents who said it was not clear as to when and where the video was recorded.

A construction crew works on a section of privately built border wall on December 11, 2019 near Mission, Texas. (Getty Images)

This is, however, not the first time that Trump’s wall has faced such a disaster. In January this year, officials in both US and Mexico confirmed that a portion of the border wall crumbled under strong winds, that time in California.

Footage showed an array of 30-foot tall steel panels collapsing on a row of trees between the towns of Calexico in California and Mexicali in Mexico. The affected part was reportedly one of the wall sections being fortified with concrete anchors before strong winds did it in. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) authorities praised Mexico for having acted fast in the wake of the wall’s collapse and diverting traffic from a nearby street. 

The location is not confirmed

Confusion prevailed over the location of the latest collapse. Mexican news outlet Debate said in an article that the video was filmed at a section of the wall dividing Texas from Ciudad Camargo in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. But Nick Miroff, a reporter with the Washington Post said in a tweet that the location could be different. The Customs and Border Patrol officials told him that the video was not taken in the Rio Grande Valley between the bordering provinces of the two neighbors.  

“Unclear where it was filmed, but based on desert terrain, daytime recording and style of bollards, I'm guessing these are images of a monsoon out west, prob Arizona,” he wrote. In another post, however, he cited CBP sources in Arizona to say that no report of a wall collapsing came from there either. “So where is this? That looks like vehicle barrier on the left side of frame, which would be somewhere out west,” he said.

While Trump has continued to brag about the border wall as one of his signature political issues, the administration’s efforts have been scaled back from building a massive new wall to replacing border security installations that are in place.

Hurricane Hanna made landfall along the Gulf Coast of southern Texas on Saturday (July 25) evening and turned into a tropical depression. It brought heavy rains and threats to flooding to parts of the state which has been hit by the coronavirus pandemic with more than 5,000 dead. 

Here are some reactions on Twitter against the collapse of the part of the Trump wall:

Sarah Reese Jones of PoliticusUSA said: “A section of the border wall that Trump has spent nearly four years bragging about was knocked down by Hurricane Hanna.”

Another journalist David Lazarus said: “I wonder how evangelicals, who believe in the divine hand of God, feel about a powerful storm knocking over Trump's wall”

Rick Wilson, co-founder of The Lincoln Project, tweeted: “I have a Trump wall joke but it blows.”

Author Don Winslow said in a tweet: “I'm still waiting for Mexico to pay for the wall. I'm still waiting for Donald Trump's health care replacement.What a fucking liar.”

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