No matter how large or small, if there’s a lie Trump can dream up, he’ll tell it. Tuesdays night’s address to the nation was so no different; in fact, it was like a roundup of Trump’s greatest hits on immigration and his ridiculous border wall claims.
"Drug trafficking through a legal port of entry is how most illegal drugs make it into the US. And this kind of smuggling will be totally unaffected by a wall put in place to block illegal border crossings."
More from @germanrlopez: #TrumpAddress https://t.co/m2oI9IkvHg
— Vox (@voxdotcom) January 9, 2019
First was his lie about stopping the heroin crisis cold should a concrete wall, steel wall, or just some kind of fence be placed across the entire 1,945 miles of border between the U.S. and Mexico, including across mountains, rivers, and lots of people’s private property.
Trump said that 300 people in this country die from heroin overdoses, and that 90 percent of those drugs come across the southern border where people enter illegally.
According to the Associated Press:
‘The Drug Enforcement Administration says “only a small percentage” of heroin seized by U.S. authorities comes across on territory between ports of entry. The same is true of drugs generally.’
There are also, of course, airplanes, boats, and tunnels. A border wall will address none of those.
Despite Trump's intimations in his address tonight, study after study shows that undocumented immigrants are far less violent than those born in the U.S. #TrumpAddress https://t.co/EsUyvBrN4W
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) January 9, 2019
Next came Trump’s claims that thousands of people have been brutally murdered by illegal immigrants and that thousands more will die without a border wall.
’40 years of crime data in 200 metropolitan areas and found that immigrants helped lower crime. New York City, for example, has the nation’s largest population of immigrants living in the country illegally — about 500,000 — and last year had only 289 murders among a total population of 8.5 million people, according to preliminary data. Those numbers mean a person’s odds of becoming a victim of homicide in tightly packed, diverse New York City were about the same as they were last year in Montana.’
The only new fact that we learned today from the #TrumpAddress, in which @POTUS recycled misleading talking points, is that he is no longer making the debunked terrorism argument.
Also, @realDonaldTrump is in trouble when even Fox News is now fact checking him. https://t.co/LVikrF06F1
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) January 9, 2019
Finally, there was Trump’s tired old refrain that Mexico will be paying for the wall. That wasn’t true when Trump said it during the campaigns and it’s not any more true now, either. Trump insists that his grand new USMCA trade deal (aka NAFTA 2.0) will cover the funding for the wall. Fact-checkers say that’s just not true.
‘Trump is assuming a wide variety of economic benefits will come from the agreement, but they can’t be quantified or counted on. For example, he has said the deal will dissuade some U.S. companies from moving operations to Mexico and he credits that possibility as a payment by Mexico for his wall.
‘The deal updates the North American Free Trade Agreement, in the main preserving NAFTA’s liberalized environment of low or no tariffs among the U.S., Mexico and Canada, while making certain improvements for each country. Trump stated inaccurately that it’s “brand new. It’s totally different.”‘
For the full lie fest, see video below:
Featured image screenshot via YouTube
