On the evening of January 8, 2019, the republican President Donald Trump delivered his promised speech from the White House’s oval office regarding the necessity for his border wall and how it’s the lack of cooperation from Democratic lawmakers in the US Congress who are responsible for the continuing the US government shutdown, started on the 22nd of December. They have been refusing to approve his demands for $5.7 billion dollars to help pay for his US southwestern wall.
The president was attempting to make the case that there is a national security and a humanitarian crisis at the US southwestern border and that his requested funding for his wall was key to addressing this national emergency.
Read Full transcripts by NYT: Trump’s speech and the Democratic response
It is my opinion that the president’s intended audience was to his base voters with anti-immigration sentiments. He wanted to demonstrate that he’s working hard to deliver on his promised wall. The other target was to the US GOP senators, some of whom have been giving clear signals that they are not happy with backing the president in continuing the US government shut down until the democrats cave to his demands by approving funds for his border wall.
Of course the president did tweet a request for funds from his base, both before and post his speech.
Fact checkers, even at FOX TV, News anchors were hard at work to review the fact content of his speech and of course, it was shared that most of what he said were outright falsehoods. But there were a couple of truthful statements like, there is a humanitarian crisis at the border of the president’s own making, but this is not addressed by the existence of a wall.
Both Democrats and Republican legislators in the US Congress have passed bills that focus in taking care of the humanitarian crisis with the additional funding for more immigration judges; the delivery of better medical care for migrant families seeking asylum; updated technology to spot illegal drugs that are transported mostly by vehicles via US ports of entry, etc.
None of this funding addressees the president’s wall which is a red herring that he has been using from the start of his campaign to cater to the anti-immigration faction of his base. The national security threat that the president keeps trumping is based on a falsehood. Migrant numbers at the US southern border in current years are its lowest rate in past 45 years. Everyone but his hard core supporters get this.
As per a 11/5/2018 AP fact check report response to the president’s lie that there are 25 million to 30 million undocumented folks in the USA, “The nonpartisan Pew Research Center estimates there were 11.3 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally in 2016, the most recent data available. That number is basically unchanged from 2009 (under President Obama’s administration). Advocacy groups on both sides of the immigration issue have similar estimates.”
“The number of such immigrants had reached a height of 12.2 million in 2007, representing about 4 percent of the U.S. population, before declining due in part to a weakening U.S. economy.”
THE VAST MAJORITY OF IMMIGRANTS DO NOT COMMIT CRIMES AND DO NOT COME HERE TO LIVE OFF OF GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE. THESE ARE LIES. There are numerous credible studies proving that the percentage of immigrants who become criminals is much less than that of the native American population. There is also the fact that those in the immigrant community access government programs at a rate much less than American citizens do.
See: FACT CHECK … “Only six immigrants in terrorism database stopped by CBP at southern border in first half of 2018,” by NBC’s Julia Ainsley
See: President Is Basing Immigration Policy Decisions On His Racist Bias/ Grondamorin
On January 8, 2019, Staff of USA Today penned the following report, “Fact check: Trump repeated several misstatements during Oval Office speech”
Excerpts:
“During a speech from the Oval Office on Tuesday night (1/8/19), President Donald Trump laid out his case for full funding for his long-promised border wall by repeating several of the misstatements and exaggerations that his administration has been trumpeting for weeks.”
“Trump cast immigrants with a dark brush, listing off murders committed by undocumented immigrants without mentioning that immigrants actually have a lower crime rate than native-born Americans. He said drugs were pouring across the southern border without mentioning that the vast majority cross through ports of entry, not the vast stretches in between where he wants to erect his wall.”
“And he blamed Democrats for an ongoing government shutdown that he proudly claimed as his own a month ago during a meeting with congressional Democrats.”
“Trump notably skipped over controversial claims made by his top officials in recent days that attempted to link terrorism with migration across the southern border. But he still managed to stretch the truth in a variety of ways. Here’s a look at some of the claims Trump made during his 9-minute speech:”
The border wall
“The border wall that he championed during his presidential campaign was the main reason Trump delivered his White House address on 1/8/19. And on that topic, he made some claims that were right, and some that weren’t.”
“He claimed that some people had called his push for a wall “immoral.” On that point, he was right. Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said “a wall is an immorality.”
“But Trump also claimed that he changed his mind from a concrete wall to a steel one “at the request of Democrats.” In fact, it was a request from his own Border Patrol agents that led him to the change, a fact that Trump himself Tweeted last month.”
“In December, he tweeted that “the experts at Border Patrol prefer a Wall that is see through,” leading to the rows of steel bars that would make up vast sections of his ever-evolving border wall system.”
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
An all concrete Wall was NEVER ABANDONED, as has been reported by the media. Some areas will be all concrete but the experts at Border Patrol prefer a Wall that is see through (thereby making it possible to see what is happening on both sides). Makes sense to me!
“The national opioid crisis that has become so deadly that it led to a rare moment of bipartisanship last year, with Trump signing a sweeping, bipartisan bill to crack down on the epidemic. During his speech, he said 90 percent of those drugs enter the country along the southern border, “including meth, heroin, cocaine and fentanyl.”
“(Truth) is that the vast majority of those drugs enter through ports of entry along the border, not the vast stretches in between where he wants to erect his border wall. According to data from Customs and Border Protection, during the first 11 months of the 2018 fiscal year, 90 percent of the heroin intercepted at the border, 88 percent of the cocaine, 87 percent of methamphetamine, and 80 percent of fentanyl, are captured at a legal port of entry.”
Link to report: Fact check: Trump repeated several misstatements during Oval Office …
Gronda Morin 
Gronda, nothing like a manufactured crisis. What our former party leaders said we they begrudgingly supported Trump is he is not going to all those things he said. My fear is he would do all those things he said. Now, they are left to defend. Mick Mulvaney’s comments that the wall was a simplistic idea in 2015 were not isolated.
Here are three paragraphs from a NY Times today, that I found interesting.
“A cattle rancher in southern Arizona said he had traveled to Mexico a day earlier, and he saw no emergency. The lines were long — officials have shut down the number of ways people there can cross — but there were no signs of conflict or people pressing to get in.
‘There is no border problem, except for ones we are causing,’ said the rancher, who said he had not had any problems with illegal border crossers on his property and who asked not to be identified out of fear of retribution from strident supporters of Mr. Trump’s planned border wall. ‘There’s no need for a bigger wall. There is not a border crisis down here.’
Some of the worsening problems, some city officials have said, are a result of the federal government’s own management of the border. In El Paso and other cities in California and Arizona, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has in recent weeks released thousands of immigrants unannounced onto city streets, forcing city officials and migrant shelter operators to scramble to accommodate them.”
Keith
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Dear Keith,
You are so right, “there is nothing like a manufactured crisis.” Now the president is stuck trying to give credence to his orchestrated US SW border crisis being a US national security risk.
What’s so sad and disheartening about all of this, is that 800,000 government personnel and families have to suffer by not getting their pay checks due them, and that real refugee families who are legally seeking asylum are being treated like animals at the border, n the name of the United States of America. THIS IS WHAT MAKES ME SICK.
Hugs, Gronda
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Gronda, I read that Chris Wallace would have none of Sarah Sanders lies on the 4,000 apprehended known or suspected terrorists at the border. He said I know this statistic and these people were apprehended at airports. She pressed on and he said none were on land and by sea. This is called disinformation perpetrated by the an untruthful President and his spokesperson.
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These are indeed troubled times. We are being led by a blind man!
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The problem here as I see it is that he is in so deep he cannot possibly extricate himself and hold on to the Oval Office unless he gets his wall. Compromise seems out of the question.
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Dear Hugh,
I fear that you are right. He could take the high road by fixing the DACA program Dreamers and others from being under the gun of possible future deportation in exchange for the funding of his wall. But this is unlikely.
He may be forced to take the less honorable way out by declaring his ‘National Emergency’ order even though many conservative legal experts are against this move.
I’m afraid he’ll take the cowardly route to save face. It makes little difference to him that the usage of a ‘National Emergency’ order will definitely face legal challenges the minute it is invoked.
Hugs, Gronda
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