During a trip with several other high-profile Trump supporters to McAllen, Texas in support of the president’s contentious U.S.-Mexico border wall project, the president’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon floated the idea of building a privately-funded border wall made with hempcrete, Politico reports.
Bannon met with former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, former Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, and other Trump wall supporters in Texas to discuss a Florida man’s crowdfunding campaign that aimed to generate private funds to help fund the border wall. Erik Prince, who founded the private military company Blackwater, attended the meeting by phone.
According to Bannon, the group is looking seriously at constructing the wall out of hempcrete.
“Do you understand the irony of using hempcrete to keep out marijuana?” — Steve Bannon, via CNN
The endeavor seems unlikely to succeed, though the group plans to hold meetings in several other prominent border towns.
“Do we have a billion dollars right now? No,” said Bannon. “But can we raise one- or two-hundred million dollars? No doubt about it.”
Notably, one- or two-hundred million dollars would still be a drop in the bucket compared to the 2,000-mile wall’s $5.7 billion price tag, according to the president.
An analysis revealed late last year that there is no correlation between miles of border fencing and the amount of cannabis seized by border agents. There is, however, a correlation between state cannabis legalization programs and a reduction in cannabis smuggling. Perhaps we should all crowdfund the federal legalization of cannabis, instead.
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