Donald Trump Brags About How Well A Border Wall Works In San Antonio, A City 150 Miles From The Border
Donald Trump may need a geography lesson before boasting about the effectiveness of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
This weekend, the president spoke to reporters about the importance of building a wall, which is the focal point of current government shutdown. In making his argument, Trump pointed to a city in Texas he said has been well served by a wall along the border — San Antonio, a city that is 150 miles from the Mexico border and does not have any wall.
The claim quickly gained viral interest and plenty of corrections to Trump. It was not the only untrue claim that Trump made in pitching the border wall. As the Huffington Post noted, Trump boasted about the effectiveness of a wall and how it turned around crime in the city, which is also not true.
“Everybody knows that walls work. You look at different places, they put up a wall, no problem,” Trump said outside the White House. “You look at San Antonio, you look at so many different places, they go from one of the most unsafe cities in the country to one of the safest cities, immediately, immediately.”
The report noted that Trump may have been confusing San Antonio with El Paso, though this would still have been incorrect as a border wall outside that city did not have any effect on the crime rate.
Trump on Saturday made another public pitch to Democrats in the hope of crafting a deal that would give him the $5 billion in border wall funding he has been seeking and re-opening the government. Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, rejected the deal even before Trump announced it in a televised address on Saturday afternoon, saying the president was not offering anything new and was not acting in good faith to try to end the government shutdown.
President Trump claims San Antonio's border wall helped lower crime rate https://t.co/EmFEWNytig pic.twitter.com/a8RqPUa5mk
— News 4 San Antonio (@News4SA) January 19, 2019
That shutdown had already became the longest in American history this week and has kept 800,000 federal employees out of work. Donald Trump had said before the shutdown that he alone would shut down the government if he did not get border wall funding and that he would assume the blame, but since then has changed course and blamed Democrats for failing to negotiate.
Pelosi said Democrats will not budge from their stance to not give any border wall funding, though she had laid out a series of proposals to enhance security at the U.S. border and better handle the influx of immigrants and asylum seekers.
