During his campaign rally in El Paso, Texas, Monday, President Trump said, “We’ve actually started a big, big portion of the wall today at a very important location, and it’s going to go up pretty quickly over the next nine months.”
Many assumed this was just the President riling up the crowd, but as it turns out Trump was being truthful.
“Today we started a big beautiful wall right smack on the Rio Grande,” Trump said at a rally Monday night, without providing details https://t.co/yvqIfONxlH by @writerknowles pic.twitter.com/Ev5LLvjFUi
— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) February 12, 2019
The Washington Examiner’s Eddie Scarry reports:
I checked in with agents at the Rio Grande Valley border sector to see if they knew what new “wall” Trump was talking about. They sent me information on construction for new border barrier announced last year. The project funds six miles-worth of concrete and steel barrier of the sort that agents told me in January is immensely successful in deterring illegal border crossings.
The wall will be supplemented by “detection technology, lighting, video surveillance, and an all-weather patrol road parallel” to the barrier, according to a release sent out by the CBP in November.
Scarry also notes that the $145 million didn’t come from an older Obama-era budget, but was part of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s budget for fiscal year 2018.
So everything Trump said about the wall already being constructed was legit.
Which leads to the real question: Why aren’t more people hearing about this?
For a media that spends so much time spreading fake news about this president, how come when he says something that is significant to the current debate over border security and government shutdowns, journalists aren’t trying to follow up and report on it?
If the wall is already being built, isn’t this important news? If Trump was lying about it, wouldn’t that also be important news?
So why aren’t journalists covering it? Without conservative outlets like the Washington Examiner and The Political Insider, how would anyone know?
Some liberals certainly need to know:
Trump's supporters are the most stupidest people in the world, they believe him when he tell's them he has started building a wall on the Rio Grande when he has not and his supporters cheers for him making that lying statement. That show's they can't think for themselves.
— Lee Clark (@PopClarkLee) February 13, 2019
In fact, the President said this twice this week. “We just started a big, big section [of wall] on the Rio Grande,” Trump said at the White House on Tuesday.
Where are the “fact checkers” when you need them? Maybe they don’t like finding facts that make the President look good.