 If there’s one policy proposal Donald Trump has outlined in great detail, it’s his idea to build a wall along the border between the United States and Mexico—and, of course, to make Mexico pay for it. While the proposal has made a great talking point for Trump, it has also drawn a lot of well-deserved criticism—and on Sunday night’s episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver delivered what might be the most thorough takedown yet. While Trump has estimated the wall would only cost $4 billion, Oliver notes that, “Donald Trump’s margin of error is only the GDP of Moldova.” Oliver did the math on the project and the cost in both dollars and common sense is much more. At first, Oliver put aside the obvious racism implied by such a plan and instead tackled the absurdity of the plan itself—highlighting its rising proposed costs, the silliness of believing Mexico would pay for it (even as Mexican officials insist they would not), and the practical complications of actually building the wall itself. But a century of empirical research suggests Trump is wrong: Immigrants are potentially less, not more, likely to commit crime than their native-born counterparts. Ultimately, Oliver suggested that buying a $75 electric waffle iron for every American would be a better use of the money than building a wall. “It’s like getting a pet walrus,” Oliver said.
– John Oliver ignored Donald Trump for a long time, then devoted a whole show to ridiculing his candidacy. Now he's specifically going after Trump's plans for a big border wall. In the latest episode of his HBO show, Oliver delivered "what might be the most thorough takedown yet" of Trump's idea to keep out immigrants from Mexico, observes Slate. (See the video here.) Among Oliver's arguments, as rounded up by Time and Vox: It would cost about $26 billion, not $4 billion to $12 billion as Trump says; Mexico wouldn't pay for it; the wall would be a nightmare to build and would likely have to be on private property; and it wouldn't work anyway. Oliver's counterproposal: Buy every American a waffle iron. Says Oliver: "Because this waffle iron plan will cost less, it'll do nearly as much to keep out immigrants and drugs, it won't harm our relationship with our third-largest trading partner, (and) if it is racist it's only toward Belgians ..."