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.”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.
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)
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:
Just attended my first @realDonaldTrump rally where my colleague BBC cameraman Rob Skeans was attacked by a Trump supporter. The crowd had been whipped up into a frenzy against the media by Trump and other speakers all night #TrumpElPaso pic.twitter.com/Oiw8osPms3— Eleanor Montague (@EleanorMontague) February 12, 2019
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 --
(Really regretting my decision to watch this rather than the Raptors game)— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 12, 2019
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.
1 comment:
And this is where we non-Trumpers beat our heads against the Wall. Trump lies every time he opens his mouth, unless he's cramming a hamberder into it, I guess. He lies about big things, small things, things that matter, things that don't. The press and media may or may not call him out on it, but let's be realistic: his base, the rally-goers, all believe him. He's turned them rabidly against the media, hence the physical attack on a reporter right there at the rally. If he says Beto's rally only got three hundred people to come, hos crowd will totally believe it, even though they can see right then and there that there were thousands of people.
It comes down to this: Trump loyalists do not care about facts. They don't care that their president is a bald-faced liar, racist, cheat, fraud and misogynist. THEY LIKE THAT ABOUT HIM. They like that he always pwns the Dems, he's always on top, he's in yer face.
We normal people are repelled by his lies, and we loathe this toad who has ruined the country, who represents everything wrong with humanity, who is in bed with our enemies here and abroad. We can't change the minds of his followers, but we must keep the pressure on, call him and his administration out on the lies, and keep fighting for our democracy. We can't afford to lose.
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