The City of El Paso, Texas has delivered a stern message to Donald Trump: Stop using our city to help make the case for your border wall!
Politics
On Monday night, Trump traveled to El Paso for a rally he hopes will somehow convince Democrats to give him $5 billion dollars for his beloved wall. However, ‘The Donald’ did get a wall, as a wall of protesters (including local and state residents as well as former US congressman and Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke of Texas) met Trump upon his arrival.
Trump’s Texas rally to shift public opinion for his wall is desperate, but not beneath him. During last week’s State of the Union Address, Trump erroneously claimed that the Texas town “used to have extremely high rates of violent crime — one of the highest in the country, and considered one of our nation’s most dangerous cities,” but “Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities.”
FAKE NEWS!
According to El Paso’s Republican magistrate, Mayor Dee Margo, the drop in crime came prior to the barrier construction and Trump is absolutely “wrong” to claim otherwise.
“The barrier went up, and the fence went up, and it’s only about ten miles long,” Margo said. “And the total fencing in the El Paso sector is about 78 miles. And it’s not continuous.” Or, in other words, the fence has helped but it is far from being the end all.
Good evening: El Paso’s @mayor_margo tweeted the following in response to the #SOTU comments about #ElPaso. https://t.co/c82SI3Arnu
— City of El Paso (@ElPasoTXGov) February 6, 2019
Margo did admit that Trump is correct about one thing: his town is indeed safe — except it’s not solely because of some barrier between the US and Mexico.
Those claims were backed up by The El Paso Times, which noted that violent crime in El Paso peaked in 1993 and dropped 34% between that year and 2006. Construction on the border fencing began in 2008 and ended in 2009.
In a protest that some believe could become the unofficial launch of a potential 2020 presidential campaign, Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke rebuked Trump’s political stunt.
“I think the president’s decision to focus on El Paso and his horrible demonization and vilification of immigrants, specifically Mexican immigrants, and his desire to make us afraid of the border can work to our advantage,” O’Rourke told the El Paso Times. “In other words, as he comes down here and as he referred to El Paso in his State of the Union speech, the eyes of the country are literally on us and will be even more so on Monday.”
I’m waiting to see if Ttump accepts the deal Dems and Repubs came to. Or if he is going to be stubborn and close the government again.