In case you ever doubted how committed the president remains to his campaign promises, despite his inability to actually implement them, here’s an answer for you.
Over recent days, the president has once again taken to rehashing some of his most vitriolic campaign rhetoric about immigration policy through such means as reiterating calls for a border wall and asserting that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA program is dead.
This Thursday while at a roundtable discussion in West Virginia that was supposed to be about tax policy, the president took to reiterating yet another point of his initial immigration policy platform. Without any apparent evidence to support his claim, he asserted that women attempting to cross the border into the United States are suffering rape at historic levels.
He commented:
‘Remember my opening remarks at Trump Tower, when I opened, everybody said, ‘oh, he was so tough.’ And I used the word ‘rape.’ And yesterday it came out where this journey coming up, women are raped at levels that nobody’s ever seen before. They don’t want to mention that.’
Watch the video below.
The reason that nobody is mentioning the president’s claim here is because it’s not clear where he got it from.
Part of what has so set off the president in recent days is reporting about a large group of migrants that was making its way through Mexico to the U.S. border. That group has since stopped its journey to the United States, but not before a Fox & Friends report about it set off the president on the rampage that he’s still going strong on.
Again, though, the angry rampage that the president has embarked upon has little connection to reality.
BuzzFeed’s Adolfo Flores was assigned to cover the group that set off the president in person, and he made it clear commenting on Twitter that he has heard no stories of anyone being raped at all, let alone people suffering as such at the level the president asserts is present.
The narrative that women trying to make it into the United States are being raped at record levels certainly supports the president’s claim that we need a wall to go up in between us and Mexico, the problem is just that it has no basis in reality.
In the context of the group of migrants making its way through Mexico, the president has asserted that our southern neighbor needs to do more to stop the flow of undocumented immigration to the United States. He has long made it clear that what he wants Mexico to do is pick up the tab for the border wall he wants to see go up.
In the face of the country making it clear they have no intention of doing so, the president has taken steps ranging from reportedly exploring the option of the military paying for the wall to threatening to veto the recently passed government spending bill because it didn’t provide enough for his wall.
Despite the numerous setbacks he has faced in the implementation of his immigration policy agenda, he continues to flail about when it comes to the policy area in a manner of reminiscent of a child unable to get their way in a game. The problem is just that as president, Donald Trump has control over actual human lives.
Featured Image via Screenshot from the Video
