Tuesday on CNN’s “The Lead,” host Jake Tapper commented on President Donald Trump‘s policies and public statements on the “issue of border security.”
Tapper said, “President Trump is preparing his prime time speech using the dignity and gravity and majesty of the Oval Office and Resolute desk to push his case for building the border wall, as the fact checkers prepare for their version of the Super Bowl.”
He continued, “President Trump’s very first Oval Office address to the nation using a prime time bully pulpit to try to sell his border wall and justify the federal government shutdown. The president is facing many challenges this evening. He needs to convince at least some of the 57% of the public who oppose a border wall that there is a clear and present need for one. He needs to buck up wavering Republicans on Capitol Hill whose constituents are starting to feel the pain of the government shutdown, convincing them that the current standoff is worth it. And if convincing the public that problems add up to the crisis, the president needs to surmount his own crisis of credibility. Polls suggest roughly 60% of the public considers the president to be dishonest and untrustworthy. And there may be no issue where the president and his administration have been more misleading than on the subject of immigration.”
After highlighting the administration’s comments on terrorists crossing at the southern border, Trump changing the wall from concrete to steel, and the president’s claim former presidents said they should have built a wall, Tapper said, “Trump’s own senior administration officials privately acknowledge that the continued spreading of falsehoods about this issue has created a real problem as the president takes to the mound and prepares to make his pitch.”
He concluded, “It’s almost as if the public can’t even hear what the president has to say because around the issue of border security there has been built a wall, a wall of misinformation, a wall of lies.”
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