Trump Boasted That His Border Wall Was 'Virtually Impenetrable.' Then an 8-Year-Old Girl Climbed a Replica
When President Donald Trump announced that his signature wall at the U.S.’s southern border would be “virtually impenetrable” while visiting San Diego last month, Rick Weber, who co-founded the Muir Valley rock climbing park in Rogers, Kentucky, was listening.
“You don’t tell a bona fide rock climber something’s impossible to climb,” Weber tells TIME.
Weber took the President’s claim as a challenge. He says he constructed his own replica of the wall, relying on the wall’s official dimensions as well as recent images of the structure. This weekend, Weber is planning to invite climbers attending the “Rocktoberfest” rock climbing festival at the nearby Red River Gorge canyon system in Kentucky to climb the model. Guests will be challenged to compete to climb up and over the wall in the fastest time.
Several people have already managed to climb up the wall replica, including 8-year-old Lucy Hancock. Hancock
didn’t use any ropes or other tools to climb the wall, but wore a belay, a safety device designed to catch a falling climber. An adult climber, Erik Kloeker, was up and over the wall in about 40 seconds.
(video of her climbing at the link)
Lucy’s mother, Karla Hancock, tells TIME that her daughter has shown a natural inclination toward politics and rock climbing from a young age. Recently, Karla says Lucy has been interested in immigration, although the third-grader has found the national dialogue about immigration policy to be confusing.
“To her, it’s black and white: If somebody’s hungry, and you have the means to give to them, why couldn’t you?” Hancock says.
In 2017, the Government Accountability Office said that Customs and Border Protection had reported that there were 654 miles of fencing on the border. TIME reported in August that
all the walls constructed so far this year have replaced older fencing, but last month Defense Secretary Mark Esper authorized a plan to reallocate $3.6 billion initially set aside for military construction projects to build Trump’s long-touted border wall without congressional approval for the funds. The Defense Department is now aiming to redirect $6.1 billion toward building 295 miles of wall since Trump declared a national emergency in February.
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Originally Posted by Swordsmyth
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