John Oliver Tears Down Donald Trump’s Border Wall Plan (Video)

“Last Week Tonight” host examines cost and practicality of proposal to stop illegal immigration

John Oliver continued to tear down Donald Trump, a.k.a. Donald Drumpf, by digging into the controversial GOP candidate’s plan to build a wall on the Mexican border.

Oliver began on Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight” by pointing out that Trump’s own estimates of what the wall will cost has increased threefold in recent months, going from $4 billion up to $12 billion.

But according to a Washington Post report, a wall that Trump is proposing would cost considerably more than that, not including the labor costs of maintaining the wall in the future.

The HBO host then examined a bill signed by George W. Bush that called for the building of 700 miles of fencing along the Mexican border. Unfortunately, as construction near the Rio Grande is partially prohibited by a treaty between the US and Mexico, large portions of the fence had to be built further inland on the US side.

So would a border wall actually stop the flow of illegal immigration or drugs coming across the border? Most likely not, as Oliver points out that a large number of illegal immigrants enter the U.S. legally, then overstay their visas, which a wall wouldn’t prevent.

Oliver closed out the segment by noting that Trump’s wall, by a conservative estimate, would cast every American citizen $77. So instead of building a wall, Oliver proposed buying every American a $75 waffle iron.

“What kind of country do we want to wake up to: One that spends billions on an impossible, impractical, symbol of fear? Or one that smells like breakfast?”

Watch the video above.

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