Scandal sums up failures
David A. Graham
Staff writer at The Atlantic
... The Post writes about how Trump has repeatedly pressured the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Homeland Security to award a contract for building a wall at the southern U.S. border to a North Dakota company headed by a leading Republican donor.
The story demonstrates the shortcomings of Trump’s attempt to bring private-sector techniques into government. It shows his tendency toward cronyism, his failures as a negotiator, and the ease with which a fairly primitive attention campaign can sway him. At heart, though, what it really exemplifies is Trump’s insistence on placing performative gestures over actual efficacy. And it is a concrete example—almost literally—of how the president’s violations of norms weaken the country and waste taxpayer money ...
It may be a not-very-subtle sign of the frustration in the Army that the news leaked to the Post the same day Trump called General Mark Milley, the Army chief of staff, to the White House and once again pressed him.
Fisher is a curious choice. The company is already suing the government after being rejected for any Army Corps contract for the border wall. Fisher was one of the companies that participated in a prototype exercise outside San Diego in 2017, but the company’s wall didn’t meet the specifications laid out by the Department of Homeland Security, which wanted a wall that agents could see through. Instead, Fisher pushed a more expensive, concrete wall, similar to the one that Trump promised during the 2016 presidential campaign. But the Fisher prototype was late and over budget. The CEO, Tommy Fisher, criticized the steel-bollard design that the government chose. Now Fisher is promising a steel wall, and it says it can build one cheaper and faster than any other contractor ...
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/trump-border-wall-contractor/590242/
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