Operation Mockingbird 2019: Six key fake things to know about Trump's border wall speech

in #informationwar5 years ago (edited)

So foreign disinformation/propaganda outlet "The Guardian" presented their "fact check" that apparently didn't dispute any of the facts the president presented but instead was just a list of the same mindless anti wall talking points the Democrats have been using in memes and such. Let's fact check it.

In a primetime address from the Oval Office on Tuesday night, Donald Trump made his case for the US to expand its wall on the southern border.

True.

The US president blamed criminal gangs and “vast quantities of illegal drugs” for “thousands of deaths”, described the situation at the border with Mexico as a humanitarian crisis and argued that the current immigration system allows “vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs” to prey on immigrants, especially women and children.

True.

Trump’s arguments often rely on inaccurate or dated statistics and lack important context about the situation at the border, which, as always, is complicated.

Misleading, this was supposed to be a fact check of this speech but instead they make a blanket assertion with no facts to back it up. In this case they couldn't actually find any inaccurate or dated statistics in the president's speech so instead some Democrat talking points! "important context" must mean, "spin".

Here are six things you should know about the president’s address.

False, knowing these specious arguments is not a need.

  1. A wall won’t stop drug traffickers
    In his address, Trump cited accurate numbers about drug overdoses in the US, but omitted important context when making the argument that building a wall would remedy these issues.
    “Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth, heroin, cocaine and fentanyl,” Trump said. “Every week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90% of which floods across from our southern border.”
    The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has said the most common way for traffickers to smuggle drugs across the border is actually by hiding them in cars that drive through official border checkpoints.
    And a wall would not resolve the demand for drugs. It might just make it more expensive for drug dealers to get drugs to customers in the US.

1. So therefore they don't catch illegal aliens toting 100 lb packs of drugs through the desert, never?


source

2 . Illegal immigration to the US has plummeted
In 2000, the government apprehended 1.6 million people crossing the border illegally. Last year, it apprehended 310,531, the lowest figure since 1971. This number reflects a drop in illegal immigration that has held steady since the economic recession in 2008.

2. So therefore we should stop trying to reduce it more? Well, its lower than it was at one point, so lets give up now!

3 . People in the US illegally often enter legally
While 310,531 people were apprehended trying to cross the southern border illegally in 2017, in the same year more than 600,000 people who entered the US legally by air or sea overstayed their visas and remained in the country at the end of the year, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
This is a tiny fraction of the 52 million people who entered the US legally in 2017. It is estimated that the number of visa overstays are actually higher, because the DHS report does not include land crossings.

3. This is one of my favorite absurd talking points, because some people come here and overstay visas therefore we should allow criminal illegal aliens to run across our border unencumbered! They never seem to consider the fact that the visa over-stayers all got visas and they would not have if they were known criminals, the known criminals can't come in that way, they have to cross the border illegally. And that is who we are mostly concerned about, the people who haven't passed background checks like the people who overstay visas.

4 . Unaccompanied children and families seeking asylum are approaching the border at overwhelming rates
In November, more than 25,000 families crossed the border, the highest monthly total on record. They are mostly from Central America and are fleeing violence and poverty.
Trump incorrectly explained this surge on Tuesday night.

So his facts were correct but he "incorrectly explained"! Nice "fact checking"

“Last month, 20,000 migrant children were illegally brought into the United States, a dramatic increase,” he said. “These children are used as human pawns by vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs.”
There is no way to track how many children are smuggled in maliciously and the numbers he cited to support this claim were actually about family apprehensions at the border, which means he is implying parents were smugglers or gang members.
The Trump administration shut down Obama-era programs that tried to address this problem and has implemented a metering policy at major ports of entry that limits how many people can seek asylum each day.
Shelters on both sides of the border are overwhelmed by asylum seekers and US Customs and Border Protection officers have been asking for more resources to house and process people.
People have a legal right to seek asylum but processing their claims is tough: the immigration court backlog has hit more than a million cases, according to Syracuse University’s transactional records access clearinghouse.
Trump consistently depicts the border crisis as an issue of national security, not a humanitarian matter. But on Sunday, in talks with Democrats aimed at ending the government shutdown, the White House added to its border wall funding proposal an offer of $800m to help fund care for families seeking asylum.

4 Unaccompanied children and families seeking asylum are approaching the border at overwhelming rates

Hmm, didn't they just contradict their claim from #2? I like how they leave out the part where that is happening because Obama established a policy allowing all unaccompanied minors to have amnesty, that's when they started sending their kids here by themselves.

5 . Terrorists rarely enter the US through Mexico
While Trump frequently mentions terrorism when discussing immigration, it is notable that he did not discuss it in his address.
At the weekend, Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, claimed that 4,000 known or suspected terrorists had been apprehended at the southern border, something her colleague Kellyanne Conway admitted was “an unfortunate misstatement”. (note none of that has anything to do with the President's speech last night)
In September, a state department report concerning 2017 found “no credible evidence indicating that international terrorist groups have established bases in Mexico, worked with Mexican drug cartels, or sent operatives via Mexico into the United States. The US southern border remains vulnerable to potential terrorist transit, although terrorist groups likely seek other means of trying to enter the United States.”
A report released by the justice department in January 2018 linked immigrants to terrorism. But security analysts immediately said the report was misleading and this month the department acknowledged the report was rife with errors and deficiencies. It has, however, refused to retract or correct it.

5. Oh, "rarely" well then that's just fine! Why not keep our border unsecured, only rarely do terrorists use it! Since there are no known official terrorist bases in Mexico then there is no need to secure the border! Let's all pretend that MS-13 doesn't come in thorough the southern border. And pay no attention to the tens of thousands of people the drug cartels kill on both sides of the border, they aren't terrorists! Or are they just not Muslims?

6 . US citizens can also be dangerous criminals
The DHS said from October 2017 to August 2018, Customs and Border Protection encountered 16,831 “criminal aliens”. Of that group, 63% were stopped at at legal ports of entry, thanks to extensive security screenings.
That left 6,259 people who were apprehended and who had criminal convictions. Among that group, 47% were convicted for illegally entering or re-entering the US and 13% had records or convictions for sexual, violent or firearms offenses.
As PRI’s The World points out, a total of 362,000 people were apprehended by border patrol in the same period, which means one in 450 of them had such convictions. Among adult Americans, that ratio is one in 12 with felony convictions.

6. This is my all time favorite, every time a TDS sufferer spews it, Americans commit crimes too so lets allow criminals from other countries to come here to victimize Americans too! Sooner or later an American citizen would have killed that immigrant cop right? So who cares? Only racists.

The original propaganda/disinformation is here

Is anyone eating this tripe?

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Trump Speech Leaves Fact-Checkers With Little To Work With

Operation Mockingbird recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network and oversaw the operations of front groups

it's still happening. The media and the front groups hate trump. The media and the front groups are the propaganda arm of the democratic party.

Thank you for mentioning it.

I have been using the same points above to respond to the other fake news outlets responses to the president, just cutting and pasting them, in fact those six cover all the Democrat/ Fake News/ NWO anti wall talking points.

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