A Coal Black Monument to Idiocy
Trump sees a border fence and he wants to paint it black
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By David Shuster
In the twilight of our declining republic, and amidst the insatiable narcissism of Donald Trump, perhaps it was inevitable that our nation’s highest offices would be occupied not by statesmen, but by MAGA decorators.
And not even good ones.
According to a recent pronouncement from Her Royal Majesty of I.C.E., Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the latest scheme from the rotting brain of Donald J. Trump is to paint the entire 1,900-mile southern border wall and fence black.
Because, we are told, that it will get so hot in the sun that no migrant would dare touch it.
Thus continues the 21st Century tradition of Republican governance by Home Depot impulse-buy. That Democrats don’t win every election when going up against this tells you all you need to know about our deeply broken system.
It’s so bad, one can almost picture Trump waving a Sherwin-Williams color swatch in the Oval Office like a toddler demanding his favorite crayon. “Black,” he says, “the hottest color. Too hot to climb. Too hot to sue me. Perfect.”
And off they go—Noem, the taxidermized tribute to empty ambition, nodding along as if Trump just invented the wheel.
The arithmetic underscores the lunacy.
The U-S Mexico border wall and fence is 1,954 miles. There are some gaps in the fencing due to treaty provisions, property rights, and topography.
During Donald Trump’s first term, it took 100 military engineers an entire month to paint an anti-climb coating one just one mile of fencing near the Calexio West port of entry. At that rate, even, the whole satanic mural would require centuries of labor, unless we conscript half of Nebraska and arm them with rollers.
The price tag? Who knows. The Stupidity? Priceless.
What we are witnessing is not security but the death of basic reason.
This a dark monument to the fear, vanity, and theatrical cruelty that now passes for Trump and the GOP’s border policy. This isn’t about deterrence. This is about optics. Black is "tough." Black looks “mean.”
It’s the shade of Darth Vader’s cape and the under-eye circles of every sleepless White House aide trying to justify this idiocy to the press. It is the perfect color for a country that has given up on thinking and has settled, at last, on cultish brooding.
Trump, whose understanding of physics rivals his grasp of humility, seems convinced that turning the wall into a stovetop will stop migrants. One imagines Trump saying, “It’s like an oven—you touch it, you’re cooked.”
Never mind that it’s already 110 degrees in the Sonoran Desert. Never mind that the people who make the journey are not stopped by rattlesnakes, dehydration, or the vastness of the landscape, as a better life for their families is worth any risk.
But we are meant to believe that paint will do the trick.
Instead of addressing immigration with any nuance or policy, we are offered the home-improvement aisle of authoritarianism: slather the wall in black paint and pray it fries a few hands.
And Noem—plucked from her job presiding over the Mount Rushmore gift shop—smiles and now repeats this plan with the sincerity of someone reciting lines in a hostage video. Her explanation, while painting a few feet of fencing recently in yet another lifeless Noem photo-op, is that black paint “helps reduce climbing and prevents rust.”
Prevents rust?
One imagines the 19th-century immigrants at Ellis Island being told they’re welcome only if the torch of Lady Liberty doesn’t corrode. This is not a policy position. It’s a punchline.
The Romans built aqueducts. We paint fences. Badly. Slowly. At enormous expense.
With all the competence of a drunk house painter on roller skates. At this point, the only thing we haven’t tried is surrounding the wall with those retractable airport stanchions that say “DO NOT CROSS.”
Oh, and lest we forget: legal and illegal border crossings are already down. Inside the United States, the Trump administration terror tactics against Latinos, foreign visa holders, and countless American citizens have convinced a lot of people to stay away.
Never mind undocumented migrants, whose border crossings have reached the lowest levels in years, international tourists are also saying “no thanks.” Those legals with foreign cash are spending it elsewhere, like in Canada.
Every decent person should be ashamed of the government we live under. And it’s getting worse by the day.
We are now governed by MAGA ghouls with paint rollers, trying to blister their way into satisfying Trump’s unrelenting ego, one scorched migrant at a time.
So go ahead. Paint the wall. Paint it pitch-black, blood-red, camouflage, Mar-a-Lago gold, or with zebra stripes. It won’t stop migrants determined to reach the United States.
But it will stand forever as a multi-billion-dollar monument to an administration that mistook cruelty for strength, stupidity for strategy, and a can of paint for an immigration plan.
David Shuster is an Emmy award winning broadcast journalist who is best known for his work at NBC News and as an anchor MSNBC. He is a contributor to Blue Amp Substack and co-host of our weekly show (Thursdays, 2pm et, on Substack), “Amped Up w/ Cliff Schecter.”
One can imagine what its like for Moslem women in the Middle East covered head to toe in black garments in 120 degree heat. Oh, and Trump is an ass.
As a practical matter, they need to remove the existing rust first. Then they need a primer coat. Then they can begin to paint, and not with a roller, as goofball grandstander Kristi Noem does. It would take a mechanized, portable, and self-contained spray-painting operation--and how would they paint the Mexican side without crossing the border? Not only is this project immoral, but it is plainly inept in concept and execution. Their hatred of foreigners has turned into a hobby of casually performing acts of cruelty to keep themselves entertained. How pitiful.