Donald Trump: I’ll put beautiful solar panels on Mexico border wall

David Gardner22 June 2017

Donald Trump is considering building a wall along the Mexican border clad with “beautiful” solar panels that would “create energy and pay for itself”.

The president touted the plan at a raucous rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, boasting that he came up with it himself. “Pretty good imagination, right? Good? My idea,” he told supporters last night. However, one company has already proposed doing this.

He initially teased the partisan crowd, promising “an idea nobody has heard about yet”. He added: “We’re thinking of something that’s unique, we’re talking about the southern border, lots of sun, lots of heat.

"

We’re thinking about building the wall as a solar wall, so it creates energy and pays for itself.

“And this way, Mexico will have to pay much less money, and that’s good, right? Solar wall, panels, beautiful. I mean actually think of it, the higher it goes the more valuable it is.”

The wall, intended to keep illegal Mexican migrants out of the US, was a major election campaign promise by Mr Trump. He has claimed Mexico will pay for the wall even though it has dismissed the idea. More than 200 firms have submitted proposals to build the structure, including Las Vegas’s Gleason Partners, which proposes a wall of steel, cement and solar panels.

While promoting one use of renewable energy, Mr Trump defended his decision to pull the US out of the Paris climate accord, claiming it would have cost “millions of lost jobs and billions of lost dollars”.

He criticised Democrats and the media and highlighted this week’s Republican victories in elections in Georgia and South Carolina: “They have a phony witch hunt going against me and you know what: all we do is win, win, win.

"The truth is, people love us. They haven’t figured it out yet.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT