President Donald Trump has made his distrust of the United States’ southern border no secret, but his rounds of angry commentary have close to no basis in reality. On MSNBC this weekend, Rep. Vincente Gonzalez (D-Texas) explained that McAllen — a prominent city in his district right along the border that the president himself has even visited as part of his campaign for a border wall — is dramatically opposite from what the president has claimed.
Although in his recent State of the Union address, Trump claimed the border area to be in a “lawless state” — there wasn’t even a single murder in McAllen throughout all of 2018. You would think that if the supposed crisis at the border posed as severe of a threat to the United States as Trump has claimed, there’d be at least some kind of indicator of the threat in a bustling city of well over 100,000 people right along the border.
That threat hasn’t exactly made itself known, however.
Gonzalez put forward:
‘I think the president should be visiting places that are in the highest crime rates, like Detroit, Michigan, like Cleveland, Ohio, like Little Rock, Arkansas. I think he should be spending his efforts trying to solve and resolve and lower crime rates in areas that really need it. There’s not a single border community that’s among the highest crime rates in the country, so his rhetoric is based on a fallacy that he’d fed to his right-wing base that seem to eat it up… I think we should be looking at the reality going forward.’
Watch below.
As he noted, the president has proposed using tens of billions of dollars for his long sought border wall blocking off Mexico, but that money could be used to address real issues rocking the United States, like gun violence in inner cities nowhere near the southern border.
Gonzalez continued:
‘I can assure you McAllen is safer than any city the president has ever lived in… I could walk around in the middle of the night in the city of McAllen without a single threat. I’m very careful to do that in Washington, D.C. This campaign rhetoric that has continued for two years really needs to stop.’
Trump has shown no sign of letting up with his angry rhetoric. The federal government was closed for over a month as this year dawned because the president would not approve any further government funding without billions for a wall, and funding that did eventually emerge runs out on February 15 with the looming threat of Trump taking further drastic action.
Trump will be heading down to El Paso this Monday for his first campaign rally of 2020, about a week after having claimed in his State of the Union address that it was a textbook example of the success of border barriers since it went from being one of the most dangerous cities in the country to one of the safest after fencing went up.
The problem is — El Paso has never been one of the most dangerous cities in the United States, as even the city’s Republican mayor pointed out.
Trump’s rhetoric keeps proving desperately disconnected from reality.
Featured Image via Screenshot from the video
