Remember Donald Trump’s border wall? For those of you who need a refresher, back in 2015, while announcing his bid for office, the former real-estate developer pitched Americans on the “big, beautiful wall” he was going to build on the southern border and make Mexico pay for. It was a dumb idea then, and it remains a dumb idea three years later, with migration experts saying such an edifice would be meaningless “unless [it] is 35,000 feet high”; government reports warning that construction of the thing would waste billions; and Mexico, shockingly, refusing to foot the bill. Naturally, that hasn’t stopped the president from insisting it’s still going to happen, despite the fact that its financing has shifted from the Mexican government to U.S. taxpayers (who will be reimbursed!), to import tariffs, back to Mexico “indirectly through NAFTA, to the military, to f--k it, the wall’s going to pay for itself. And now, after months of back-and-forth that at one point shut down the government, we’ve learned that the president attempted to foist his special brand of stupidity on Spain, too.

At an event in Madrid this week, Josep Borrell, the country’s foreign minister, told attendees that Trump seriously suggested the Spanish government deal with the Mediterranean migration crisis by building a wall across—wait for it—the Sahara desert. Unsurprisingly, the partition aficionado was apparently undeterred when presented with a series of reasons why Spain would probably take a pass:

According to . . . Borrell, the U.S. president brushed off the skepticism of Spanish diplomats—who pointed out that the Sahara stretched for 3,000 miles—saying: “The Sahara border can’t be bigger than our border with Mexico.”

Trump wooed voters in the 2016 election with his promise to build a “big, beautiful wall” across the U.S./Mexico border, which is roughly 2,000 miles long.

A similar plan in the Sahara, however, would be complicated by the fact that Spain holds only two small enclaves in north Africa—Ceuta and Melilla—and such a wall would have to be built on foreign territory. . . . Trump is thought to have made his frontier recommendation when Borrell accompanied King Felipe and Queen Letizia to the White House in June.

Amazingly, his pitch to Borrell isn’t even his most cringe-worthy wall-related comment of late. That distinction goes to a series of remarks he made during an interview Tuesday with The Hill, in which Trump suggested he wanted to model the design for his border wall—the one intended to keep “rapists” and “criminals” from entering the country—after the Flight 93 Memorial, telling John Solomon and Buck Sexton:

I’ll be doing things over the next two weeks having to do with immigration, which I think you’ll be very impressed at. So, we are building the wall, I could build it—you know what I do best is build—I could build the whole thing in a year, but um, there was a picture that was sort of great. I wish I had it. I had a picture of where I was this weekend. They built this gorgeous wall where the plane went down in Pennsylvania. Shanksville. And I was there. I made the speech. And it’s sort of beautiful, what they did is incredible. They have a series of walls, I’m saying, “It’s like perfect.” So, so we are pushing very hard. As you know we’ve gotten approved in the House but the Senate cannot get it approved.

To be clear, this is typically the point at which the doctors tell the family they believe grandpa has suffered a series of mini-strokes, each of which has caused irreversible damage to his brain.

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Trump’s visit to Florence-ravaged Carolinas focused on the important issues

Namely, how his golf course fared during the hurricane that killed 37 people:

Trump traveled to the area to assess the ongoing federal response to the hurricane, but he also took a moment to inquire about a personal matter.

While he was being briefed about the deadly hurricane-related flooding and damage, Trump asked, “How is Lake Norman doing?”

When Trump learned that the area around the lake was fine, he neglected to mention his golf club, but responded, “I love that area. I can’t tell you why, but I love that area.”

That sound you hear is the nation breathing a deep sigh of relief that the Trump National Golf Course Charlotte was unharmed. Considering Hurricane Florence was, per the president, “one of the wettest we’ve ever seen from the standpoint of water,” it was touch and go there for a while.

Jack Ma tells the U.S. to go f--k itself

In January 2017, just before Trump was inaugurated, billionaire Alibaba founder Jack Ma gave the president-elect a talking point he milked for many months thereafter: that the Hangzhou-based company would create as many as 1 million new jobs in America. That, of course, was before Trump launched a trade war with China with no end in sight—something Ma is weirdly not thrilled about, and that led him to call off the plan on Wednesday. “The promise was made on the premise of friendly U.S.-China partnership and rational trade relations,” he told Chinese news site Xinhua. “That premise no longer exists today, so our promise cannot be fulfilled.” At an Alibaba investor conference the day prior, Ma called the trade battle “a mess” that could last two decades.

Scandal-plagued bank tried to land itself a Gary Cohn

Wells Fargo, which has made a name for itself as the premier, go-to bank if you’re looking to get ripped off, reportedly tried to hire the ex-Goldman banker after he quit his gig at the White House last spring:

[Cohn] met with Wells Fargo board members at least once around March or April this year—just weeks after he submitted his resignation as director of the National Economic Council, one source told the Post.

“They approached him,” the source said. “He turned them down.”

Cohn—approached by the Post following an event in New York on Monday evening—emphatically denied that he was still in talks with Wells Fargo.

While the firm was presumably interested in Cohn’s time in the financial-services industry and his connections to the current administration, perhaps it also sensed that he was sympathetic toward banks accused of massive fraud.

Trump tells guy whose house was destroyed to look on the bright side

Hey, at least you got a free yacht out of it, assuming this is, in fact, how property laws work!

Elsewhere!

The “Great Bull” market is “dead,” and here’s what’s next, Bank of America predicts (Bloomberg)

Hackers Are Targeting Bitcoin with a Leaked N.S.A. Software Tip, Report Says (Bloomberg)

Peter Thiel’s pot company was briefly worth more than Twitter (N.Y.P.)

Banks are still reluctant to get involved with pot stocks, even amid a huge rally (CNBC)

Warren slams Mulvaney for donor meeting (Politico)

Cash-Strapped Americans Are Willing to Leverage Their Homes to Pay the Bills (Bloomberg)

Bank CEO Resigns After Money-Laundering Probe Expands (W.S.J.)

Texas grandma kills 12-foot gator, says she’s finally avenged her miniature horse (Dallas News)