Don Lemon Mocks Trump's Border Wall Talk: Everything But 'A Moat With Alligators'

Stupefied by President Donald Trump’s claim Friday that he “never said” he would “build a concrete” wall along the southern border, CNN’s Don Lemon mocked his laundry list of descriptions for the barrier.

The anchor smacked down the president’s claim in his Friday night broadcast, airing a compilation of Trump’s various references to the wall, which included several mentions of concrete in addition to solar panels, steel, slats and fencing.

“There was everything in there except for a moat with alligators lapping at immigrants’ rear ends,” Lemon said. “Oh my gosh. C’mon y’all. Can we be real?”

Trump wrote about the concrete idea on Twitter as recently as the end of December.

Aside from the matter of building materials, Lemon also ripped Trump’s demands that Congress approve money to pay for the wall, an issue which sent the government into a partial shutdown more than two weeks ago as it left lawmakers divided in the House and the Senate.

Earlier in the day, the president claimed he could declare a national emergency to get his wall, a point disputed by Lemon and others.

″The fact is, there is no national emergency at our southern border,” Lemon said. “This is simply another attempt by this president to get his way by doing an end run around Congress to get his precious wall, the wall he is willing to shut down the federal government for, the wall he has been talking about for years.”

In a fact check of Trump’s claim, NBC News spoke with experts in presidential power and legal matters who argued that while an emergency could be called, the amount of money he would be able to access at that point remains unclear and congressional approval for the the spending would likely still be required.