Beto Can't Keep His Facts Straight: Makes 5 Misleading Claims in Less Than 1 Minute
Democratic 2020 presidential hopeful Robert “Beto” O’Rourke appeared to be particularly averse to actual facts last week when he was questioned on an exceptionally hyperbolic comparison he had made between President Donald Trump’s “rhetoric” and that of the “Third Reich” of Nazi Germany.
Indeed, in the span of a mere 49 seconds, O’Rourke made no fewer than five separate terribly misleading, if not blatantly false, claims about the president that don’t stand up to scrutiny.
“I compared the rhetoric that the president has employed to the rhetoric that you might have heard during the Third Reich,” O’Rourke said while campaigning Thursday in Iowa, according to The Intercept. “Calling human beings an ‘infestation’ is something we might have expected to hear in Nazi Germany.
“Describing immigrants who have a track record of committing violent crimes at a lower rate than native-born Americans as ‘rapists and criminals,’ seeking to ban all Muslims, all people of one religion, what other country on the face of the planet does that kind of thing? Or in our history? Or in the history of the Western world?” he continued.
“Putting kids in cages. Saying that neo-Nazis and Klansman, and white supremacists are ‘very fine people,'” the candidate added.
Democrat Beto O’Rourke lies a lot right here:
-Trump said “we have an ‘infestation’ of MS-13 gangs in certain parts of our country”
-The travel ban is not a Muslim ban
-Trump never said neo-Nazis and KKK members were “very fine people”
-The remaining comments need more context pic.twitter.com/vwhSlw2IlG— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 6, 2019
The Daily Wire‘s Ryan Saavedra parsed through that brief statement and counted up all of the blatant lies and misleading claims, then proceeded to debunk each of them one at a time.
First off, Trump has never referred to the immigrants coming into this nation as an “infestation,” but rather used that term in a tweet on July 3, 2018, that specifically referenced the brutally sadistic gang MS-13.
Trump had tweeted, “When we have an ‘infestation’ of MS-13 GANGS in certain parts of our country, who do we send to get them out? ICE! They are tougher and smarter than these rough criminal elements that bad immigration laws allow into our country. Dems do not appreciate the great job they do!”
Next up was O’Rourke’s false claim that Trump had referred to all immigrants from Mexico as “rapists and criminals,” a media-perpetuated lie that has hung around since the first day Trump announced his candidacy in 2015.
Trump had infamously said in his campaign kick-off speech that Mexico wasn’t sending its best to our borders, but rather, “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” The inclusion of “some … are good people” makes it apparent that he was not referring to all immigrants as criminals and rapists.
Then there was the patently false assertion that Trump had banned or attempted to ban all Muslims from entering the country. The Trump administration has implemented a travel ban against seven dangerous nations — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, and Venezuela — that can’t or don’t sufficiently vet migrants heading to America.
Two of those nations aren’t Muslim at all, and furthermore, some 49 Muslim majority nations were not included in the ban, meaning nearly 90 percent of the world’s Muslim population is still permitted to travel to the U.S.
Following that was the “kids in cages” tripe that the left has pushed ad nauseam in response to the Trump administration’s attempted crackdown on illegal immigration. It refers to separate detention facilities at the border for children while authorities determine if they are truly related to the adults they crossed the border with.
Furthermore, that practice had been ongoing since at least the Obama administration, if not even prior to that.
Finally, there was the infuriatingly false claim that Trump had referred to neo-Nazis and white supremacists as “very fine people” in the aftermath of the Charlottesville protests in 2017.
As Steve Cortes pointed out on RealClear Politics more than a week ago, all it takes is a momentary review of the president’s remarks from that day to see that he specifically excluded those hateful individuals — “because they should be condemned totally” — and was instead speaking of both the protesters supporting Confederate monuments and those protesting against the monuments.
It is incredibly ironic that the left routinely accuses President Trump of lying all the time, when it is they themselves who perpetuate and promote blatant falsehoods about the president, take his words out of context, twist or add meaning to things he says, or simply make stuff up to malign and smear him.
Sadly, O’Rourke’s lies are just par for the course and will go unnoticed by the liberal media that would chastise anyone on the right for even one of those five lies, if aimed at a Democrat.
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