The 2020 presidential campaign has just begun, and the level of absurdity has already reached new heights. It is important that we not let the week pass without reiterating the stunning lie that was put on placards and hoisted to the ceiling at Donald Trump’s latest campaign event in El Paso, Texas.
Finish The Wall.
We have become numb to becoming numb. We are so overwhelmed with lies that when a new one is belched out of the Trump campaign, it tends to resonate for a short news cycle before we move on. And suddenly it isn’t questioned anymore. It becomes fact or a lie that has to be continually shot down to the point of overkill.
“Now, you really mean, ‘Finish that wall,’ because we’ve built a lot of it.” – President Trump
The Washington Post writes of Trump seeking to turn failure into a campaign theme.
“And faced with the fact that he has yet to build an inch of the concrete or steel wall he promised, Trump and his campaign have started relying on a rhetorical sleight of hand: speaking the wall into existence.
“Now, you really mean, ‘Finish that wall,’ because we’ve built a lot of it,” Trump falsely claimed at a campaign rally Monday in El Paso after supporters broke out in chants of “Build that wall!”
“As he spoke, giant placards with the words “Finish the Wall” hung from the rafters, an unmistakable signal Trump’s aides say reflects the campaign’s growing push to convince the president’s supporters that the border barrier they imagined him building is already real.”
So Donald Trump is doubling down on delusion, now claiming his non-existent barrier is nearly built.
“The president has always survived by living inside a reality-distortion field,’’ said Tim O’Brien, author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald” (2005). “When things don’t go his way, he simply creates another narrative.”
Trump’s claims that the wall is well underway have intensified and become more descriptive in recent weeks as he weathered a record-breaking government shutdown over wall money and bipartisan negotiations to stave off a second lapse in federal funding.
But the bottom line remains the same. You have to begin something before you can finish it. And Trump’s wall has yet to begin. Some of Trump’s supporters, according to the Post, say “Finish The Wall” is merely a metaphor for border security. Seriously? That’s not what the president is saying.
News, commentary and analysis by News and Guts
