Trump doubles-down on the need for a 'see-through' border wall because he wants 'to be able to see'
- President Donald Trump told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Thursday that his proposed wall along the southern border of the US needs to be transparent.
- The comments echoed earlier remarks Trump made about a see-through border wall.
President Donald Trump reiterated the need for his proposed massive wall on the southern border of the US to be "see-through" during a Wall Street Journal interview published Thursday.
While funding has yet to be secured for the wall, the president explained why the wall needs transparency.
"If you have a wall this thick and it's solid concrete from ground to 32 feet high which is a high wall, much higher than people planned," he said. "You go 32 feet up and you don't know who's over here. You're here, you've got the wall and there's some other people here."
"If I'm standing here, I want to be able to see 200 yards out," he added. "I want to be able to see, I don't want to have a piece of concrete that I can't see."
If the wall was not see-through, Trump said people would "have no idea who's on the other side."
"Does this make sense or am I just wasting my time?" Trump asked, to which White House communications director Hope Hicks interjected, saying the see-through version of the wall is "what you've always talked" about and is "consistent with what you've always said."
The comments echoed July remarks Trump made to reporters aboard Air Force One, suggesting that the border wall needed to be transparent so that people on the US side wouldn't get hit by massive sacks of drugs tossed over it.
"One of the things with the wall is you need transparency," Trump said. "You have to be able to see through it. In other words, if you can't see through that wall - so it could be a steel wall with openings, but you have to have openings because you have to see what's on the other side of the wall.
"And I'll give you an example: As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don't see them - they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It's over," Trump continued. "As crazy as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall. But we have some incredible designs."