S7 E22: Border Wall II, Virtual DNC & Roger Stone: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

The 2020 Democratic National Convention

• The 2020 Democratic National Convention was held virtually due to the pandemic, resulting in an "unconventional convention" with some awkward moments, but also some unique and entertaining moments, such as the virtual roll call of delegates where states showcased themselves in creative ways (38s).
• The state of Rhode Island stood out during the roll call, with its chairman pledging delegates while standing next to a calamari mascot, highlighting the state's official appetizer (1m33s).
• The convention's tone was moderate, with brief appearances from progressive stars like AOC and Stacy Abrams, but more time given to Republicans like Meg Whitman, Colin Powell, and John Kasich (2m7s).
• Joe Biden's nomination speech played it safe, showcasing his warmth and empathy, but was light on policy details, instead focusing on broad goals like expanding child care and ending racism (2m35s).
• The speech emphasized character, compassion, and decency, which, while not concrete policy agendas, are attractive qualities in contrast to the current administration (2m49s).
• The convention spent a lot of time highlighting Trump's unfitness for office, but this may have been redundant given Trump's own actions, including sowing distrust of voting by mail and refusing to disavow the QAnon conspiracy theory (3m16s).
• The biggest news regarding Trump was buried, with the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee releasing its final report, declaring that the 2016 Trump campaign had repeated contacts with Russian operatives (3m49s).
• A report confirmed that Trump's campaign was uncomfortably close to Russian intelligence, which was already known but is now in writing, with new details including Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort's willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with Russian intelligence, posing a grave Counter Intelligence threat (4m2s).
• The report also details how Roger Stone tried to get Wikileaks to drop damaging emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign chair, and while Trump denied knowledge of Stone's activities, the report assesses that Trump did in fact speak with Stone about Wikileaks on multiple occasions (4m18s).
• The bipartisan report from a republican senate committee is a damning indictment of Trump's character, underscoring the importance of the election in November, and despite the DNC's strategy of "Biden is not Trump" being an overwhelmingly successful strategy, Trump still has a very real chance at winning reelection (5m5s).
• The Washington Post tracked down a rad Island calamari chef who is undecided about voting for Biden, citing a lack of knowledge about the Democratic nominee, which is frustrating given Biden's nearly 50 years in public office (5m27s).
• The DNC strategy of wooing undecided voters with the star power of John Kasich and Meg Whitman may pay off, but if not, the convention will have been a depressingly conventional one (5m54s).

The Border Wall

• The main story of the night is the border wall, one of the more upsetting things to emerge from 2016, which will be discussed in more detail (7m43s).
• Trump's border wall was a key promise of his first campaign, and he talked about it constantly, even pointing out potential flaws in the idea, such as the lack of a ladder or rope to climb down if someone were to get over the wall (8m18s).
• The wall was discussed in a previous piece four years ago, where it was noted that the wall seemed to be transparently racist, expensive, and pointless (8m47s).
• Trump has spent the last three and a half years putting his plan into action, and just before the pandemic, he claimed that things were going great, with over 125 miles of the "super duper wall" being built (9m6s).
• However, the wall is not "super duper" and has been a shambles, with Steve Bannon and three others being accused of defrauding hundreds of thousands of people by personally profiting off a scheme to raise money to help build the wall (9m41s).
• Trump insisted on building a concrete wall, despite many border patrol agents advising against it, and even held a "wall pageant" to select the design (10m48s).
• The wall pageant featured eight contestants, and Trump essentially organized a weird contest in the middle of the desert to select the design (10m58s).
• The wall has caused damage, and it's crucial to examine who has been doing some of the building and what exactly has been built (10m29s).
• A camel beauty contest in Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest scholarship opportunities, and it's not the right time to argue that there should be fewer camels in STEM (11m28s).
• Eight prototypes of the border wall were built to test which one would work best, but a government report found that every mockup was deemed vulnerable to at least one breaching technique (11m44s).
• The chosen design for the border wall features a wall of slats or bollards topped by a metal anti-climbing plate, which Trump reportedly thinks is ugly (12m13s).
• Despite Trump's claims that the wall is effective, a video posted on social media shows two men scaling a replaced portion of the wall in California, proving that it is climbable (13m50s).
• Finding places to build the wall is a challenge, as hundreds of miles of border barrier had already been constructed under previous presidents, and much of the rest of the border is covered by natural barriers or private property (14m17s).
• Trump has completed 275 miles of new wall, but only five miles are in locations where no barriers previously existed, with the rest being replacements or upgrades to existing barriers (14m35s).
• Chad Wolf, Trump's acting Secretary of Homeland Security, argues that the new wall is a significant achievement, despite most of it being replacements or upgrades to existing infrastructure (14m52s).
• Chad Wolf is the person who made the assertion that the US is simply replacing the wall, and his appearance is notable for resembling a model for a knockoff Top Gun costume. (15m1s)
• The replacement wall is a completely new physical infrastructure, not just a repair of the existing barrier, and it is causing significant problems, including disrupting animals' migratory patterns and slicing up people's land. (15m28s)
• The new barriers are not effective in stopping drugs or people from entering the country, as most of that happens through ports of entry, and the Department of Homeland Security's own Inspector General has issued a report saying the administration did not use a sound methodology to identify and prioritize investments in physical barriers. (16m11s)
• The construction of the wall is costing a lot of money, with $15 billion dollars garnered from taxpayer money, and the funds are being diverted from other important projects, such as replacing an overcrowded middle school on a Kentucky military base or repairing a daycare for service members' children. (16m45s)
• Senator Lindsey Graham has justified the diversion of funds by saying that a secure border is more important than a new school for middle school kids in Kentucky, which is a questionable rationale. (17m14s)
• The construction of the wall is being carried out by companies such as Fisher Sand and Gravel, whose head, Tommy Fisher, has been trying to curry favor with Trump, and has appeared on Laura Ingraham's show to promote his company's involvement in the project. (18m8s)
• Fisher Industries' CEO, Tommy Fisher, appeared on Fox News multiple times to praise the president and promote his company's wall designs, despite the designs being rejected by DHS and the Army Corps of Engineers due to operational requirements (18m19s).
• Fisher's company was added to a list of pre-approved bidders for the wall project due to personal pressure from the president, who liked Fisher after seeing him on TV (19m15s).
• Fisher Industries has a history of controversies, including lawsuits for sexual discrimination, tax fraud, and over 2,000 violation notices from regulatory bodies, as well as 469 criminal charges (19m43s).
• The company's founder's son pleaded guilty to tax fraud in 2009, and the company paid over $1 million in back taxes (19m55s).
• Local government officials have rejected Fisher Industries' bids on contracts due to concerns over the company's history, including the former head of the company being convicted of child pornography and sexual harassment (20m33s).
• Fisher Industries partnered with the nonprofit organization "We Build the Wall," which was founded by a veteran named Brian Kolfage and took money from individual donors to build new sections of wall on private land (21m3s).
• The organization held a fundraising event featuring a man calling himself "Foreman Mike," who promoted the idea of buying a "bollard panel" for $55,000 or a brick for a lower price (21m25s).
• A fundraising campaign called "We Build the Wall" raised $25 million, with some of the money allegedly being misappropriated by its organizers, including Steve Bannon and Brian Kolfage, for personal expenses such as luxury items and payments towards a boat (22m23s).
• The organizers, including Bannon and Kolfage, deny the charges, but the allegations have raised questions about the legitimacy of the fundraising campaign (22m50s).
• The campaign's goal was to build a private border wall, with some of the funds going towards construction, including a wall in New Mexico built by Tommy Fisher's company (24m20s).
• The wall in New Mexico features personalized bricks, including one that reads "Thick Latinas will not be deported," which has been widely criticized (24m34s).
• Another wall built by Fisher's company along the Rio Grande has been referred to as the "Lamborghini of walls," but an investigation by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune found erosion beneath the foundation of a stretch of wall in Texas, just months after it was built (24m57s).
• Despite initial support from President Trump, he has since distanced himself from the project, claiming he knows nothing about it, but evidence suggests that he was aware of and supported the project (23m24s).
• Trump ally Chris Kobach stated that the president told him to inform the people working on the project that it had his blessing, and that he wanted the media to know that he supported it (23m48s).
• Fisher Sand and Gravel, a company with a checkered past, partnered with a nonprofit to build a section of the border wall, which has shown signs of erosion and may collapse or topple into the river if not fixed (25m31s).
• The company's foreman is not the actual foreman, and the nonprofit's backers are under indictment for skimming money for their own uses (25m45s).
• Despite this, Fisher Sand and Gravel has received over $2 billion in border building contracts, making them one of the biggest contractors for the project (25m59s).
• The Trump administration is stepping up efforts to take private land by filing more eminent domain lawsuits during the pandemic than at any other time in his presidency (26m17s).
• The administration is also using a provision in the REAL ID Act of 2005 to waive all legal requirements necessary to construct the wall, allowing them to bypass environmental and cultural heritage protection laws (26m24s).
• This has enabled construction crews to plow through Native American communities, causing devastating effects, including controlled blasts that have damaged sacred sites (26m42s).
• The chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation tribe testified before Congress that the blasting has "totally disturbed" and "forever damaged" their people's ancestral lands (26m53s).
• The border wall is not a functional barrier, but rather a monument to Trump, who is reportedly obsessed with his legacy and has even asked how he can be added to Mount Rushmore (28m23s).
• The border wall is considered a monument to a presidency, symbolizing its destructive, pointless, ineffective, racist, and weak nature (28m41s).
• The damages caused by the border wall will have long-lasting effects that will need to be addressed for a very long time (28m54s).