Jake Tapper: ‘The President Is Lying to You to Get His Border Wall’

 

CNN’s Jake Tapper opened today’s The Lead by calling out President Donald Trump for his false claims about El Paso ahead of his trip their tonight.

He played the president’s State of the Union claim about crime in El Paso and said, “Whatever your position on border barriers or a border wall, the case the president lays out about El Paso is simply false. El Paso has never had ‘one of the highest rates of violent crime in the entire country,’ according to FBI data.”

But it’s not just the FBI at odds with Trump, Tapper noted. The Republican mayor of El Paso said POTUS is wrong too.

“It is correct that Customs and Border Patrol officials would more barriers on the U.S./Mexico border,” Tapper said. “That’s not in dispute. But the president wants to depict undocumented immigrants as hordes of almost entirely violent criminals, which is not true. Se makes claims that are also not true.”

He concluded, “The president is lying to you to get his border wall.”

You can watch above, via CNN.

[image via screengrab]

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!

Tags:

Josh Feldman is a Senior Editor at Mediaite. Email him here: josh@mediaite.com Follow him on Twitter: @feldmaniac