One Lie Among Many: Trump and El Paso

You can find many distinguished organizations to fact-check delusional demagogue and bigot Donald "Rump" Trump's State of the Union speech last night, like here, here, and here. It's important for the public record to document his multiple lies and distortions for posterity, and that we never become numb enough to it to ignore it.

One of the standard lies he tells to justify his medieval manhood wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for is how walls work. Here's an example from last night:

"The border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crime — one of the highest in the country, and considered one of our nation's most dangerous cities. Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities.” (our emphasis)

El Paso Sheriff Richard Wiles begs to differ with the demagogue-in-chief:

“The facts are clear. While it is true that El Paso is one of the safest cities in the nation, it has never been ... considered one of our nation's most dangerous cities. And, El Paso was a safe city long before any wall was built. President Trump continues to give a false narrative about a great city that truly represents what this great nation is all about."  (our emphasis)

It's not only the sheriff's word, but statistics from the FBI disprove Rump's lying about the wall in El Paso, as FactCheck's detailed report demonstrates.

Rump's cult and the cynical Rethug hacks that stood and applauded him last night don't care that he's engaged in prolific lying that can be proven in minutes of fact-checking. There are variations of an aphorism that goes, "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."  Rump's counting on that, and he uses his national platform for that purpose.