‘Build The Wall’ Gofundme Reaches $3 Million In Donations In Three Days

President Trump ran in 2016 promising to build a wall on the border with Mexico, originally claiming that Mexico would be forced to fund its construction. However, for the first two years of his presidency, Trump has unsuccessfully sought funding from Congress for the wall, with the president and Congress recently agreeing to a continuing resolution to avert a shutdown and fund the government at current levels. In recent days, the president has spoken about finding money in other budgets for the wall.

The next step appears to be crowdfunding.

As the Inquisitr reported yesterday, a Florida man has launched a GoFundMe page in order to collect donations from individuals to build the wall. The campaign has a goal of $1 billion, and as of Thursday morning had raised $3 million in donations through three days from more than 50,000 donors. The amount was at $1 million as of Tuesday night.

While $3 million is a tremendous amount of money for a crowdfunding campaign to raise, the total raised so far would only account for.003 percent of its goal of $1 billion. And since the wall itself would cost a lot more than $1 billion – Trump asked for $18 billion in wall funding back in January – it’s unclear how much the crowdfunding campaign would help make the wall a reality even if it reached its goal.

Crowdfunding of the border wall or similar goals is actually not a new idea. There’s a separate crowdfunding effort from the Build The Trump Wall Foundation, which has raised a little over $8,000 on the platform Fundly.

A group called Deplorable Party USA has been selling “Border Wall Bricks,” which are not meant to actually go in the real border wall but rather are advertised as “a symbolic, personalized, laser engraved, full size brick to be placed in our ‘Wall of America’ in honor of our President Donald J. Trump.” Those cost $59.95, and buyers are encouraged to buy one for themselves and a second one to go in the “symbolic” wall.

That site also asks those visiting to “donate any amount to help us in our continuing effort to support our President and to promote the impeachment of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Maxine Waters.”

And Matt Christman, of the podcast Chapo Trap House, jokingly suggested a crowdfunded border wall, all the way back in September of 2017:

I’m leaving so much money on the table. pic.twitter.com/22RtEqfYOL

— matt christman (@cushbomb) December 20, 2018

And what happens to all of that money from the wall GoFundMe if the wall isn’t ever built? “If we don’t reach our goal or come significantly close we will refund every single penny,” the campaign website says.