Host Chris Wallace played a clip of Trump's Homeland Security Secretary claiming her agency has stopped more than 3,000 "special interest aliens" -- people from countries that have produced terrorists -- attempting to cross into the United States from Mexico.
Within minutes, Trump's press secretary claimed in a live feed "we know that roughly, nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists come into our country illegally and we know that our most vulnerable point of entry is at our southern border."
Somehow 3,000 jumped to 4,000. And somehow people simply from countries where terrorists have originated morphed into full-blown terrorists.
But wait, there's more.
Host Wallace then threw a big bucket of cold truth on Trump's press secretary.
All suspected terrorists have attempted to enter the United States via airports. None have attempted to cross over from Mexico (details here). So it's really the airports that are the most vulnerable point of entry, not the Mexican frontier.
So here we see a perfect example of a fact metamorphosed into a lie. The Fact: some possible terrorists try to enter via airports. The lie: thousands of terrorists are crossing over from Mexico.
Lies like these are the justification the Trump administration is spinning in its claims that the U.S. desperately needs funding for a border wall, so desperate that the President has shut down the government.
Here's another fact: TSA workers are not being paid because of the shutdown, and as a result, security is slipping at airports because some workers take sick days in order to find other work. Thus, a suspected terrorist is now more likely to enter the country today through a less secure airport.
Claiming that the government shutdown is needed to make America safer, Trump is actually putting the country at greater risk. So not only are his border claims a big lie, they're a dangerous lie.
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