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Obama Tears Down Trump’s Border Wall Plan

On Tuesday President Obama bluntly tore down Donald Trump’s proposal to force Mexico to pay for a border wall, slamming his plan as “half-baked”, counterproductive and downright “whacky”.  Obama accused the Republican frontrunner of coming up with foreign policy ideas that have the potential to hurt the United States’ reputation around the globe. Yahoo News reports: In a memo obtained by the Washington Post, Trump said he would threaten to cut off money transfers from workers inside the United States — including U.S. citizens — to relatives in Mexico unless that country makes a one-time payment of $5 billion to $10 billion to pay for the construction of a 1,000-mile border fence. Obama, speaking to reporters in the White House briefing room, said that doing so could cause “enormous” damage to Mexico’s economy, which depends on those transfers, usually known as remittances. The proposal is also “impractical,” he said. “The notion that we’re going to track every Western Union bit of money that’s being sent to Mexico — you know, good luck with that,” Obama said derisively. “Then we’ve got the issue of the implications for the Mexican economy, which, in turn, if it’s collapsing, actually sends more immigrants north [...]