Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Fact Checking A Notorious Liar



Demagogue and corrupt Kremlin asset Donald "Rump" Trump spoke to his cult rally in El Paso, Texas last night and (spoiler alert) he lied his very large ass off. Here are just a couple of examples from the Associated Press:
TRUMP: We’ve actually started a big, big portion of the wall today at a very important location, and it’s going to go up pretty quickly over the next nine months. That whole area will be finished. It’s fully funded ... and we’re going to have a lot of wall being built over the next period of time.” — White House remarks.

THE FACTS: There’s less going on here than his words convey. Construction is getting started on merely 14 miles (23 kilometers) of extended barrier, approved by Congress about a year ago in an appropriation that also authorized money to renovate and strengthen some existing fencing. The extension will be in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. That’s not a “big, big portion” of the grand project he promised in his campaign and countless times since — a wall that, combined with existing fencing and natural barriers, would seal the nearly 2,000-mile (3,200-kilomete) border with Mexico. 
TRUMP, addressing El Paso rally: “[Beto O'Rourke] has 200 people, 300 people, not too good. ... That may be the end of his presidential bid.”

THE FACTS: That’s not true, either. O’Rourke’s march and rally drew thousands. Police did not give an estimate, but his crowd filled up nearly all of a baseball field from the stage at the infield to the edge of outfield and was tightly packed. (our emphasis)
He's obsessed with crowd size and wall length (calling Dr. Freud, calling Dr. Freud). The compromise that the Senate and House appropriators are floating has far, far less money ($1.4 billion) than Rump requested ($5.7 billion) for a border wall, and that money would be used not for a wall, but for secure fencing for 55 miles of border. So now Rump has to pretend to his cult that the wall is being built regardless of funding (the banners in his rally read "Finish the Wall" as if it's near completion). He needs his base to believe -- contrary to reality -- that the wall they were expecting (and that Mexico was paying for) is being built so that they don't abandon him in 2020. He's lost the argument, and he's desperate.

BONUS: There was also this violent attack on a BBC cameraman by a red cap thug in Rump's audience, during Rump's ritual attack on the media. This is brown shirt territory:

BONUS II:  Check out real- time Rump fact checker par excellence Daniel Dale's twitter feed for the mother lode of lies from El Paso.  A few minutes into the speech, Dale was already tweeting this --


We feel your pain. Thank you for your service!

BONUS III:  Steve Benen on Rump gaslighting the yahoos --
... It was against this backdrop that Trump began his remarks by bragging, “I don’t know if you heard, right. Today we started a big beautiful wall right on the Rio Grande. Right smack on the Rio Grande.” 
Soon after, when the crowd broke chanted, “Build that wall,” the president corrected them. “You really mean ‘finish that wall,’” Trump said, “because we’ve built a lot of it already.” 
It’s as elaborate an exercise in national gaslighting as anything Americans have ever seen. 
Before Trump took office, there were 654 miles of barriers – of one form or another – along the U.S./Mexico border. As the New York Times recently documented, there are still 654 miles of barriers along that same border. This administration has repaired and replaced some old barriers, but it hasn’t expanded what previously existed.  (our emphasis)
The yahoos, of course, ate it up.

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