Listening to Trump now. When asked if he would accept a deal without a wall, there were the words "I wouldn't be happy with it" and "there are other alternatives". A lot of double talk after, but to me it sounds like he's going to end up caving. Well, unless someone calls him weak for backing down. Actually, as he rambles on he seems to revert. Dude is unpredictable. He seems to feel more than one incompatible way at once and instead of reconciling that difference acts like whichever way he is feeling at the time is the way he's always felt. Now he just said "I have other alternatives if I need them" and "we have to have the wall". So I'll update my prediction to him caving on the shutdown then declaring an emergency to build the wall anyway when Congress passes a bill to end the shutdown without wall funding. What scares me about that is that Congress is probably going to make concessions short of wall funding to try and appease Trump then end up paying for a wall too. But if it works that way his ass needs to be grass through impeachment post-haste.
I thought the same thing listening to him lately. He 's leaving things "open to interpretation". But, his word salads often do this. It's possible Trump grasps that he is in a no-win situation. Abandon the shut down, lose the base. Stay the course with the shut down, lose everyone else
plus a percentage of the base. Either way, his chances to win in 2020 look dim -- he may be aware of this.
Has a thorough cost assessment phase for the Wall project been carried out?
Something that will result in proper estimates, quantity surveying of materials, feasibility studies, environmental impact, resourcing plans, Gantt charts, timeliness, etc., etc., that would normally be done for such a huge undertaking
What would be the cost for such a phase? Would getting such a phase underway be sufficient to both please the base and the talking heads on TV he listens to and sometimes takes orders from in the short term and also eventually result in an excuse to not do it when the huge price tag to the taxpayers is finally understood?
Or..Appoint a commission to study the issue, accept bids, draw up plans, work out how to get the land etc. with the plan that construction will start somewhere around say July 2021 (assuming the new sitting president still wants it). He and his base can complain all they want