President Donald Trump in his Texas rally Monday night continued to push back against fact checks and statistics and official statements from El Paso city authorities that crime did not go down with the construction of a border fence in the border city.
"I don't care whether a mayor is a Republican or a Democrat—they're full of crap when they say it hasn't made a big difference," Trump said at the El Paso County Coliseum.
"I heard the same thing from the fake news," the president said. "They said, 'Oh, crime actually stayed the same.' Didn't stay the same. Went way down."
We are fighting for all Americans, from all backgrounds, of every age, race, religion, birthplace, color & creed. Our agenda is NOT a partisan agenda – it is the mainstream, common sense agenda of the American People. Thank you El Paso, Texas - I love you! https://t.co/4Lz4PUwKzV
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 12, 2019
In his State of the Union address last week, Trump claimed that El Paso was an example that "walls work and walls save lives.
"The border city of El Paso, Texas, 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," Trump said. "Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities."
According to crime data, El Paso has not been "one of our nation's most dangerous cities," but rather, had significantly lower crime rates from 1985 to 2014 than cities of similar sizes, said Politifact fact check. On the contrary, the violent crime rate increased 3.2 percent from 2007, the year before fence construction began, to 2011, Politifact reported, citing FBI Uniform Crime reporting data.
El Paso County passed a resolution on Monday, hours before Trump's rally, stating that he had "falsely stated that El Paso was one of the most dangerous cities in the United States until the construction of border fencing. El Paso's violent crime rate dropped 62 percent from its peak in 1993 to 2007, a year before constriction on the fence began," the resolution read.
Further refuting Trump, the resolution stated: "Though it is difficult to welcome him to El Paso while he continues to proliferate such untruths, we do welcome him to meet with local officials to become properly informed about our great and safe region."
But at the rally Trump denied those facts as he worked to convince his supporters that he was right.
"These people, you know you'd think they'd want to get to the bottom of a problem and solve a problem. Not try and pull the wool over everybody's eyes," Trump said. "So for those few people that are out there on television, saying, 'Oh, it didn't make too much of a difference.' It made a tremendous—people from El Paso, am I right?"
Trump's supporters cheered as he said, "It's just fake news.
"It's like, it's obvious. It's common sense." he continued. "Just a few thousand feet, as an example from where we stand right now on the other side of the border, it's one of the most dangerous cities in the world, Juarez, Mexico."
Trump has been repeatedly taken to task for misleading statements he has made as president, and for frequently denying indisputable facts. New York Times columnist Charles Blow in late 2017 wrote that Trump was like Nazi leader Adolf Hitler when it came to spinning lies.
"The way he has manipulated the American people with outrageous lies, stacked one on top of the other," Blow wrote, "has an eerie historical resonance."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
A Los Angeles native, Jessica Kwong grew up speaking Spanish, Cantonese and English, in that order. Her journalism career started ... Read more
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