In a national address, President Donald Trump called on Congress to provide $5.7 billion for a border wall to address what he called a “crisis” on the border. The president made some false and misleading claims, and provided some facts without context.
Misleading Border Crime Statistic
U.S. Border Patrol encountered 6,259 immigrants with criminal convictions, many of them for illegal entry charges, in fiscal 2018, according to the most recent statistics. Yet, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney misleadingly claimed authorities “had arrested 17,000 criminals at the southern border.”
RNC Misleads on ‘Immoral’ Democratic Bill
The RNC attacks a “Pelosi plan” as “immoral” because it “would spend $54 billion taxpayer dollars on foreign countries” but not address “the border crisis.” Yet that’s the same amount that Republican-controlled appropriations committees approved in June for the State Department’s operations, which includes foreign aid.
Democratic Spin on Border Security Funds
Trump’s Border Blunders
Rep.-elect Green Wrong About Vaccines, CDC Fraud
At a town hall event on Dec. 11, Rep.-elect Mark Green of Tennessee inaccurately claimed that vaccine preservatives might cause autism. He also repeated an unsubstantiated claim that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “fraudulently managed” data that showed a link between vaccinations and autism.