A wall around California....

Jerry Brown: If Trump is elected, we'll build a wall around California

By Dianne de Guzman

Turns out the governor of California can certainly crack jokes on occasion.

At a dinner in Sacramento for labor organizers on Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown told a crowd that if Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump wins the presidency, California would build its own wall at the state's border — an obvious reference to Trump's ambition to build a wall between the United States and Mexico.

"If Trump were ever elected, we'd have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of this country," Brown was quoted as saying by the Sacramento Bee, who had video of the remarks.

While this certainly brings up fantasies from California's Trump haters about how the wall would be built and who would pay for it — Nevada? Oregon? — should Trump win the election, the joke from Brown brought some levity to a contentious political season.

Brown, in comparison to Trump, has been generous toward helping undocumented immigrants in California. Brown has approved California laws that help undocumented students apply for college financial aid or obtain a driver's license, as the Sacramento Bee pointed out.

Just two weeks ago, Brown called Trump's wall idea "absolutely preposterous," in an interview with Bloomberg.

"It would create such tension with our closest neighbor that, probably, a dumber idea I can't imagine," Brown said to a Bloomberg Politics reporter.

Brown went on to say at Monday's dinner that the country has benefited from the influx of young workers — namely undocumented immigrants.

"Some of these old white guys ought to recognize that the whole pension system would collapse if we didn't have a bunch of young people coming into this country and into this state," Brown said. "They're not all coming from here. They're coming from other places."