It’s just strange blame-shifting today, Trump declaring that the midterms caused the stock market failure, but impeachment is definitely on his mind this morning, and of course he is the GOAT.
And now there’s more stunt meetings regarding the shutdown, as MSM does human interest stories about how foreign tourists can’t go to the zoo.
Trump’s doing another free-association riff and he’s getting more incoherent:
The president and his allies gave an address to the media after the end of their meeting with Congressional Democrats regarding border security and the government shutdown. It was difficult to make sense out of Trump’s remarks though because he kept bouncing around as he hyped up his border wall, talked about the steel industry, and made all sorts of disjointed, rambling points as he spoke.
Naturally, the Twitter-verse is following this. And so far, a lot of people are taking in Trump’s comments and saying he’s either babbling again or just not making a whole lot of sense.
Daniel Dale does his level best to track the Trump lies in real time.
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Trump admits that a steel wall would be more expensive than a non-steel wall, but he says he probably wants to do a steel wall "because I really feel the other side feels better about it." (The other side does not feel substantially better about it.)
- There is, again, no basis for Trump's repeated claim that San Diego begged him to build a wall there. Even San Diego's Republican mayor opposes the wall.
- Trump lies again that the steel industry was "almost dead" before he took office. He is just saying things in rapid succession.
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Trump in conclusion: "The southern border is a dangerous, horrible disaster. We've done a great job. But you can't really do the kind of job we have to do unless you have a major, powerful barrier."
- Trump is wrong when he says, as he has on numerous occasions, that Obama said upon signing DACA that it wasn't going to be upheld. Obama had previously expressed skepticism that he could take unilateral action to protect DREAMers, but not, obviously, at that moment.
- Trump on human traffickers' routes: "They get off the road, and they drive out into the desert and they come in, they make a left turn - usually it's a left, not a right." After getting distracted, he resumed: "They make a right turn before they get to the port of entry."
- "Usually it's a left, not a right." Here's the full Trump quote on the driving routes of human traffickers.
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Asked if he is still proud to own the shutdown, Trump says, "I'm very proud of doing what I'm doing. I don't call it a shutdown." Trump calls it a shutdown. He keeps calling it a shutdown.
- Trump is lying when he says he's been building his wall. He's accurate when he specifies, on infrequent occasions, that he's talking about renovating existing barriers, some of which has indeed happened.
- Trump said he asked Pelosi, today, "why don't you use this for impeachment?" (?) He said, "Nancy said, 'We're not looking to impeach you,'" and he said he responded, "That's good, Nancy, that's good."
- Trump on Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib's profane vow to impeach him: "I think she dishonoured herself, and I think she dishonoured her family. Using language like that in front of her son..."
- Reminded he promised Mexico would pay for the wall, Trump interjects, "Here we go again." Asked how he is not failing to fulfill his promise, he repeats his absurd argument that the new North American trade agreement means Mexico is paying.
- Trump says you don't even need to call his border project a wall. "You could call it a steel fence." Flashback to 2015:
- Trump repeats his false claim that "China is paying us tremendous tariffs." While many Chinese manufacturers eat some of the tariff costs, they are paid by American importers of Chinese products.
- For the third time, Trump falsely boasts that his meeting with Xi in Argentina lasted "almost four hours." He left the meeting site less than three hours after the meeting started.
- Trump repeats his regular false claim that Apple is investing $350B in the US because of his tax law. The company's announcement was pretty vague, but experts say more than $250B of that was regularly planned operations spending.
- Asked about a "safety net" for federal workers who are going without pay and need the money, Trump says, "The safety net is going to be having a strong border."
- Trump says he's not worried about Apple's stock decline because "they've gone up hundreds of percent since I'm president." That's not even close to true. It's been an increase of less than 30%.