Trump starts defense of the Wall with a Dog Whistle racist trope saying he is wants the Wall for blacks and Mexican immigrants. Oh, baby. BS!
"Trump’s big immigration speech was based on 2 false premises"
The president wants you to be very afraid. The facts say you shouldn’t be.
By Aaron Rupar@atrupar Updated Jan 9, 2019, 12:02pm EST
https://www.vox.com/2019/1/8/18174669/trump-speech-immigration-fact-check-border
"Drugs
The first false premise Trump pushed is that a border wall is needed to stop the flow of drugs into the country:
Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs — including meth, heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl. Every week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90 percent of which floods across from our southern border. More Americans will die from drugs this year than were killed in the entire Vietnam War.
Trump’s facts are correct, but the conclusion he draws doesn’t follow from them. The majority of drugs smuggled through the southern border come through official ports of entry — not the areas in between them."
OK, that most drugs come thru ports of entry is public for anyone to read and acknowledge.
"Crime
The second false premise Trump pushed is that Americans should be afraid that undocumented immigrants will murder their families:
The only thing that is immoral [about the wall] is the politicians who do nothing and continue to allow more innocent people to be so horribly victimized. America’s heart broke the day after Christmas when a young police officer in California was savagely murdered in cold blood by an illegal alien who just came across the border. The life of an American hero was stolen by someone who had no right to be in our country.
Day after day, precious lives are cut short by those who have violated our borders. In California, an Air Force veteran was raped, murdered, and beaten to death with a hammer by an illegal alien with a long criminal history. In Georgia, an illegal alien was recently charged with murder for killing, beheading, and dismembering his neighbor. In Maryland, MS-13 gang members who arrived in the United States as unaccompanied minors were arrested and charged last year after viciously stabbing and beating a 16-year-old girl.
Over the last several years, I have met with dozens of families whose loved ones were stolen by illegal immigration. I’ve held the hands of the weeping mothers and embraced the grief-stricken fathers. So sad. So terrible. I will never forget the pain in their eyes, the tremble in their voices and the sadness gripping their souls. How much more American blood must we shed before Congress does its job?
But Trump’s suggestion that undocumented immigrants are more prone to commit acts of violence is false. A 2018 Cato Institute study that looked at crime in Texas found that “As a percentage of their respective populations, there were 56 percent fewer criminal convictions of illegal immigrants than of native-born Americans in Texas in 2015.”
"Two charts demolish the notion that immigrants here illegally commit more crime"
By Christopher Ingraham June 19, 2018
“The criminal conviction rate for legal immigrants was about 85 percent below the native-born rate,” it adds."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/border-101/?utm_term=.905c3f5f5c7f
"Post immigration reporter Maria Sacchetti says: “The president is portraying the border as this lawless area where we’re being overrun by illegal immigrants, particularly criminals. And the federal records just show that’s not true.”"
That was simple.
"Fact-checking Trump's immigration speech"
By Priscilla Alvarez, Katie Lobosco, Jeremy Diamond, Maegan Vazquez, Clare Foran, Marshall Cohen, Geneva Sands, Lydia DePillis and Bob Ortega, CNN
9 Jan 2019
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/08/politics/fact-check-trump-immigration-speech/index.html
"Washington (CNN)In his first formal address to the nation from the Oval Office, President Donald Trump painted a picture of a national threat and humanitarian crisis occurring along the US-Mexico border, saying his signature border wall would provide a solution.
Here's a partial rundown of the President's statements and the context:
Trump [Lie]: "The wall will also be paid for indirectly by the great new trade deal we have made with Mexico."
The President has made this false claim before.
Trump long ago abandoned his 2016 campaign promise that Mexico would pay to build a wall. Instead, he now makes the case that Mexico will "indirectly" pay for the barrier, thanks to the potential increase in tax revenue generated by his replacement for the North America Free Trade Agreement.
But the new deal hasn't yet been ratified by Congress, where Democrats have expressed opposition. And even if the new United States Mexico Canada Agreement ends up raising tax revenue, there's nothing earmarking that money for a wall. Income and corporate taxes are general revenue that would have to be appropriated by Congress.
Another way trade could bring money into the Treasury is through tariffs -- which are paid by American importers when they buy foreign goods. But like the original NAFTA, the new deal aims to keep trade between the three countries largely tariff-free.
-- Katie Lobosco"
Sorry Donald, down one. OK, please give me another, sir!
"Trump [Lie]: "All Americans are hurt by uncontrolled illegal migration."
It's very difficult to know exactly how much or little undocumented immigrants cost the United States. Many experts contest the notion that undocumented immigrants are a strain on the economy. A 2017 analysis noted that undocumented immigrants "make considerable tax contributions," for example.
Similarly, a 2018 study by the libertarian Cato Institute, which reviewed criminal conviction data from the Texas Department of Public Safety, found that immigrants -- legal or illegal -- are less likely than native-born Americans to be convicted of crimes. Throughout the country, there is also generally a decrease in the number of violent crimes, according to the FBI.
-- Priscilla Alvarez
Please sir, may I have one more! ; < )
"Trump [Lie]: "More Americans will die from drugs this year than were killed in the entire Vietnam War."
Some 58,220 Americans died as a result of the Vietnam War. In 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the number of total drug overdose deaths was 70,327.
However, the President's assertion is misleading, conflating the drugs coming across the US-Mexico border with total drug deaths in the US. In addition, it's not currently known whether overdose deaths will increase or decrease when the CDC releases 2018 data later this year.
Trump's figures also do not distinguish between deaths caused by drugs smuggled into the country versus those prescribed by US doctors.
The majority of hard narcotics seized by Customs and Border Protection come through ports of entry either in packages, cargo or with people who attempt to enter the US legally. The only drug that is smuggled in higher numbers between legal entry points is marijuana, according to information from CBP and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
China has been one of the leading sources of illegal synthetic opioids. However, China's role with the importation of fentanyl may soon shift, since President Xi Jinping agreed to make fentanyl a controlled substance late last year.
-- Maegan Vazquez"
Last one.
"Trump [Exaggerate much?]: "In the last two years, ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with criminal records, including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes and 4,000 violent killings."
Trump is using these statistics to paint the picture of dangerous criminals coming across the border. On balance the stats he cites are largely accurate, yet the fact is more than half of those crimes are non-violent in nature.
Over the past two years, roughly two-thirds of the undocumented immigrants arrested by ICE had prior criminal convictions -- most of those either immigration violations or nonviolent crimes. In all, of the 302,051 arrests made by ICE enforcement and removal officers, 210,876 had prior criminal convictions. If you include those with pending criminal charges, you get just more than 266,000.
His numbers for assaults and homicides reflect what ICE reported: 99,207 people charged or convicted of assaults and 3,914 charged or convicted of homicides. However, the number of sex-related crimes ICE reported appears a bit lower, at more than 27,000 sex-related crimes.
Criminal traffic offenses accounted for the largest single category of criminal offenses, with just over 161,000 charges or convictions, according to ICE.
The President is including people who have been charged but not convicted of crimes. So for assaults, for example, if you only look at convictions, the number is much lower -- 61,906 convictions for assault over the past two years.
-Bob Ortega"
Where are the pesos if the Mexicans were going to pay for the Wall.
Tweety is losing his grip trying to sell America on the Wall where the selling points are purely for his base, lies, and exaggerations.
The GOP has no basis for the Dems to support the Wall. The other day and today I read Republicans, and see Republicans tell me on TV that the Dems voted for the Wall (of a sort) in 2013, so why not now in 2019. Because while the Senate pass the Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2013, the GOP run House DID NOT PASS THE LAW!
For emphasis: the House was controlled by the Republicans in 2013!
To be sure we understand the point: It was not the Dems who voted down the immigration law this country needed in 2013, IT WAS THE REPUBLICANS.
"The Corrupting Falsehoods of Trump’s Oval Office Speech" [About the Wall.]
By Eric Lach
"In the ten or so minutes that he spent giving an address from the Oval Office on Tuesday, President Trump ran through a litany of talking points, some deceptive, some contradictory, some vacuous, some diversionary. He did not have a single argument for why he decided, last month, to shut down the government over border-wall money. So, instead, he offered Americans their pick."
Actually, Trump did so little in the broadcast, he essentially led his Base to a place where THEY have to justify the Wall because he did not.
Sad prompter reading . . . Lindsey Graham tried to help, but he isn't getting any traction. Lindsey is as vacuous as Trump on his support and justification for the Wall.
Trump points out a murder to get sympathy for his Wall, a dangerous way to cast all illegal immigrants.
"Searching for a Substantive Response to Trump’s Hateful Speech"
By Masha Gessen 9 Jan 2019
"In their joint response, the House and Senate Democratic leaders spoke Trump’s language, too. Both Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stressed that they broadly agree with the President on the need for border security. The disagreement, they claimed, concerned only the best way to accomplish it. Pelosi proposed new technology, more personnel, and the vague measure of “more innovation to detect unauthorized crossings.”
Pelosi organized her rebuttal as a list of five “facts”: an antidote to Trump’s “misinformation and even malice,” she said. But only her description of the government shutdown itself was, in point of fact, factual; the rest was misleading at best. She said that bipartisan legislation rejected by Trump would fund the government and “smart, effective border-security solutions,” and claimed that “we all agree we need to secure our borders.” But there is no need for new border-security solutions, because there is not, in fact, a pressing problem of border security. “The women and children at the border are not a security threat; they are a humanitarian challenge,” Pelosi said, but this apparently empathetic statement omits the important fact that most of the women and children—and the men—at the southern border are trying to seek asylum, a right that is guaranteed to them by Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They are not, in other words, begging for charity; they are asking for their due from a system designed to protect them. One might say that by failing to challenge the basic premise of Trump’s speech, and by failing to characterize asylum seekers accurately, Pelosi lied, too, by commission and by omission.
Schumer led explicitly with allying himself with the President’s position. “Make no mistake,” he said, “Democrats and the President both want stronger border security.” The problem with the wall, according to Schumer, is that it’s expensive and ineffective. He didn’t say that it is immoral. He called his disagreement with the President a “policy difference,” thereby dignifying Trump’s rants and tantrums."
Then came the better response to Trump's vacuous Wall defense, and false "emergency" crap. How is an "emergency" dependent on what happens days or weeks from now?
"One person did provide a substantive response to Trump’s speech. She did not fact-check Trump—an uninformative chore that serves primarily to amplify the President’s falsehoods. Nor did she accept his terms of the conversation, as Pelosi and Schumer did. Speaking on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on Tuesday, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said things that ought to be amplified:
"The one thing that the President has not talked about is the fact that he has systematically engaged in the violation of international human rights on our border. He has separated children from their families. He talked about what happened the day after Christmas—on the day of Christmas, a child died in [Customs and Border Protection] custody. The President should not be asking for more money to an agency that has systematically violated human rights; the President should be really defending why we are funding such an agency at all. Because right now what we are seeing is death, right now what we are seeing is the violation of human rights, these children and these families are being held in what are called hieleras, which are basically freezing boxes that no person should be maintained in for any amount of time. . . . He is trying to restrict every form of legal immigration there is in the United States. He is fighting against family reunification, he’s fighting against the diversity visa lottery. . . . This is systematic, it is wrong, and it is anti-American.""
America needs to give this Congresswoman more respect even if she is a first year Senator! She has her sh*t together, She is woke!
"Trump walks out of shutdown negotiations after Democrats reject wall money, calls meeting ‘total waste of time’"
By Erica Werner, Sean Sullivan, Mike DeBonis, Seung Min Kim January 9, 2019
Enough said by the title of the article . . .
