"There's no proof of anything." That's the qualifier that should come with basically every statement Donald Trump ever makes, from his fervent claim that "there is no collusion" with Russia to the "millions and millions" of people who he said voted illegally in California to his claim that "criminals and unknown Middle Easterners" had infiltrated the group of migrants now traveling from Central America to the U.S. border with Mexico.
Trump's addled brain is just a putrid fact-free factory that spews out pollution when it's overheated, which is most of the time. The New York Times's Julie Hirschfeld Davis traced both the origins and the ripple effects of Trump's fantastical caravan delusion, showing how a Fox News free-association mashup about the migrants and terrorist groups spurred Trump's baseless presidential tweet storm Monday claiming "criminals and unknown Middle Easterners” were “mixed in" with the migration of several thousand refugees. When reporters started calling around for verification of Trump's latest whopper, Customs and Border Protection pointed at the White House, Homeland Security provided general numbers but no proof, and the State Department dodged the question with useless talking points.
When Trump was later asked about it by the traveling press corps, he directed one reporter to go figure it out for himself.
You know what you should do, Jon? Go into the middle of the caravan, take your cameras, and search. Okay? Search.
Trump promised Jon, "You’re going to find MS-13, you’re going to find Middle Eastern, you’re going to find everything." But alas, no reporters traveling with the migrants found the criminals or "Middle Eastern."
Finally, pressed on Tuesday in the Oval Office on whether he had proof, Trump conceded, "There's no proof of anything, but there could very well be." (Watch the video below.)
In the same Oval Office spray, Trump offered, "I have very good information" about the group of refugees. Oh yeah? Prove it.
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Listen to Trump ramble on about all the proof he doesn’t have until he finally concedes that everything he just said is useless.