Day 1,041: Trump tells big lies about impeachment polls, border walls
When it comes to lying and inventing tales of grandeur, Donald Trump is as prolific as anyone.
Tuesday was Exhibit 15,210 and Exhibit 15,211.
On impeachment, Trump falsely claimed — as he has for many days — that polls shows support for impeachment shrinking, including from Democrats.
The reality is polling consistently shows more Americans in favor of impeaching and removing Trump than not. Support for impeachment from Democrats remains quite strong, and among independents it is steadily growing.
Morning Consult found 83 percent of Democrats want Trump impeached and removed, compared to 13 percent of Republicans and 48 percent of independents who said the same. (Eighty-four percent of Democrats, 13 percent of Republicans, and 48 percent of independents said the House should vote to impeach.)
SSRS found even stronger support for impeachment and removal among Democrats — 90 percent — and similar figures for Republicans (7 percent) and independents (40 percent).
It is clear independents are split, but Morning Consult’s results found an 8 percentage-point increase in independents who believe the House should impeach Trump, and a 9 percentage-point increase in independents who believe the president should be impeached and removed, compared to the firm’s November 15–17 poll. Support for the impeachment inquiry itself also rose 4 percentage points among the independents surveyed by Morning Consult.
On border walls, Trump claimed that he should get credit for “replacement” barriers and implied that they’re going up in many locations. Trump is trying to impress on people that he is keeping his 2016 promise to build a wall along the southern border.
In the face of his campaign promises, Trump has conscripted the military to build the barriers; less than 100 miles of fencing has been constructed; rather than Mexico paying for it, the military has been forced to cut projects to fund it; it’s not “going up fast”; and it’s not even new barrier.
In the two years and 308 days that Donald Trump has been president, he has constructed zero miles of wall along the southern border of the United States. He has, to be fair, replaced or reinforced 76 miles of existing fence and signed it with a sharpie. A private group has also built a barrier less than a mile long with some help from Steve Bannon and money raised on GoFundMe. But along the 2,000 miles from Texas to California, there is no blockade of unscalable steel slats in heat-retaining matte black, no electrified spikes, no moat and no crocodiles. The animating force of Trump’s entire presidency — the idea that radiated a warning of dangerous bigotry to his opponents and a promise of unapologetic nativism to his supporters — will never be built in the way he imagined.
Laughably, the “impenetrable” wall can be defeated by a $100 saw from a hardware store.
Trump will tout polls and faux facts for the rest of his life. But those assertions are debunked with even a couple minutes of basic reading.
1,041 days in, 421 to go
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