President Donald Trump kicked off Wednesday by sticking to his midterms gameplay of focusing on the “caravan” of mostly Honduran women and children who are already exhausted from walking hundreds of miles from their homes into Mexico.
And he lied. Again.
While his supporters on Fox News are also spewing lies about the migrants, claiming they will bring smallpox – a disease that was fully eradicated worldwide by 1980 – to America, the Pentagon announced it is sending, at Trump’s direction, 5200 troops to the border in response to the migrants.
Perhaps afraid there won’t be enough photos of troops at the border “defending” frightened Republican voters to motivate them to go to the polls, Trump has decided to throw even more accusations about Hondurans.
“The Caravans are made up of some very tough fighters and people,” Trump tweeted Wednesday. “Fought back hard and viciously against Mexico at Northern Border before breaking through. Mexican soldiers hurt, were unable, or unwilling to stop Caravan. Should stop them before they reach our Border, but won’t!”
This of course is mostly a lie.
Trump followed that up with this:
Some “very bad thugs and gang members.”
There is, of course, zero proof of that.
The Washington Post’s Kevin Sieff, who is traveling with the caravan, offered these tweets in response to one of Trump’s similar fear-mongering tweets and comments to reporters last week:
The New York Times did report that last Friday, when the migrants entered Mexico, there was “a tense hourlong standoff, during which migrants hurled objects at the police, including rocks and shoes, the police fired canisters of tear gas, forcing the migrants into a retreat.”
Six police officers were injured.
“After the violence had subsided, however, leaders of the caravan organized the migrants into orderly lines for processing by Mexican migration officials.”
That hardly warrants a description of, “Fought back hard and viciously against Mexico at Northern Border before breaking through. Mexican soldiers hurt, were unable, or unwilling to stop Caravan.”
And it lasted an hour.
Perhaps President Trump is just getting bad information. A Google search turned up nearly no news of attacks on Mexican police by migrants. There was this fact check of Trump’s false claims, and an embarrassing report in a far right wing website called American Thinker, (perhaps an oxymoron?), which insisted that the caravan is “as many as 10,000 strong now,” and the altercation at the border ended with police badly injured.
They offered this tweet as “proof” (You may have to click on the photo to view it, it shows a bloodied police officer.)
It took less than 60 seconds to find that the image, or at least its description, is fake.
It is a photo from 2012, according to the European Pressphoto Agency, when Mexican police detained 1000 protesting students.
It seems nearly all the claims from the right about the migrant “caravan,” which is a few thousand people, mostly women and children, marching by foot in search of a better life, are just plain false.
Why are Republicans so scared? Why is Donald Trump?
The Washington Post on Tuesday published this video of what Trump calls “very tough fighters,” and, “very bad thugs and gang members.”
Maybe if he watches it he’ll be less frightened?
Probably not. His “fear” is racism, plain and simple.
Image: Screenshot via Washington Post/YouTube