Watch Ken Cucinelli Try to Memory Hole Years of Trump Selling Border Wall: He Never Said It Was a ‘Silver Bullet’
On CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time, former Virginia Attorney General and Trump supporter Ken Cucinelli tried to memory hole years of President Donald Trump’s glossy rhetoric and bold promises about the sweeping, positive impact of building a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border: “No one ever said a [Southern border] barrier will be a silver bullet.”
Cucinelli quickly followed up on that to say: “The president never said this [border wall] will solve everything.”
Those comments stand in stark contrast to years of Trump’s campaign speeches and presidential rallies, where his promise to “build a wall” was one of his key applause lines and consistently the only policy he mentioned when it came to addressing immigration. Notably, the Virginia politician offered up this spin the same day that Trump unveiled a new immigration proposal, one that has angered some immigration hardliners since it now puts less emphasis on a Southern border wall. Back in January, the White House’s public standing took a direct hit when it instigated a five-week government shutdown over Trump’s ultimately unsuccessful demand for $5-plus billion in funding for the wall.
CNN host Chris Cuomo immediately called out Cucinelli’s blatant attempt to rewrite history and claim Trump didn’t sell the wall as his top policy to solve immigration. “He did,” Cuomo replied. “He said that it, the fence, was a panacea and it wasn’t.”
In fact, there are countless examples of Trump touting the wall as an unsurpassed solution for not only immigration but crime, opioid overdoses, and even trade. The importance of the wall as Trump’s sole immigration policy solution predates even his official campaign, as this Forbes article from earlier this year makes clear: “Amazingly, for something so central to the current U.S. president, the wall came about as a ‘mnemonic device’ thought up by a pair of political consultants to remind Donald Trump to talk about illegal immigration.”
Within the past six months, there are numerous other examples of Trump making a blanket statement that “walls work” and citing their potentially amazing powers. In December, he claimed on Twitter both that a wall was “the only way to stop drugs, gangs, human trafficking, criminal elements and much else from coming into our country” adding that a border wall “will work perfectly.”
The only way to stop drugs, gangs, human trafficking, criminal elements and much else from coming into our Country is with a Wall or Barrier. Drones and all of the rest are wonderful and lots of fun, but it is only a good old fashioned Wall that works!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2018
This isn’t about the Wall, everybody knows that a Wall will work perfectly (In Israel the Wall works 99.9%). This is only about the Dems not letting Donald Trump & the Republicans have a win. They may have the 10 Senate votes, but we have the issue, Border Security. 2020!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 27, 2018
During Trump’s border wall speech in January, amidst the government shutdown, he said: “This barrier is absolutely critical to border security. It’s also what our professionals at the border want and need. This is just common sense.” He echoed this again in April at a White House roundtable on immigration: “[The wall has] had a tremendous impact already. …How do you stop these large, sometimes massive groups of people from just pouring through? What do you do? Prior to the wall. Once the wall is up, it’s easy.”
The CNN host did make one small concession to Cucinelli, however, about the latter’s attempt to rewrite Trump’s border wall obsession. “Ken, you’re 100 percent right,” Cuomo acknowledged, “he never said the words ‘silver bullet.'”
Watch video above, via CNN.
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