As usual, another meeting between Donald Trump and an elected leader has gone completely differently in the minds of the people involved. This week, Republican Mayor of San Diego Kevin Faulconer came to Trump’s office to discuss federal action in a specific area under Faulconer’s purview — the Tijuana River Valley. The community there is under risk during normally dry seasons of sudden flooding, which sends massive amounts of pollution from the Tijuana River into the groundwater and surrounding area, and San Diego has been grappling with the problem at a local level for years.
It turns out, however, that Trump is so star-struck by himself that he apparently didn’t hear a word that Faulconer said about the help they needed, and instead assumed that the Mayor had come to his office to thank him for the border “wall” construction in the area.
The problem there, of course, is that San Diego is essentially the model for the country of what has already been working in terms of barriers at the border, based on the series of fences erected and fortified during the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton — not walls, mind you, but fences — and what has been done in San Diego during the Trump administration has been changed so many times it couldn’t be considered anywhere near complete, even in the tiny area they’ve been working on.
Entirely wrapped up in esteem for himself, Trump phoned in an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Wednesday night program, and after about half an hour of Sean vigorously chapping his own lips kissing Trump’s ass, they finally got to the issue of immigration and the border. That’s when Trump spun the tale of the fawning thanks from Faulconer as if it were old hat:
We just finished San Diego, as you know, San Diego in California. They’re so happy, the mayor was just up in my office, uh, great guy, and he came up to thank me for having done the wall because it’s made such a difference. He said it’s like day and night. He said people were flowing across and now nobody can come in.”
That, apparently, was news to Mayor Faulconer.
Craig Gustafson, the director of communications for Faulconer, told Voice of San Diego that Trump was wrong:
That’s not what Mayor Faulconer said. We all know that the President uses his own terminology. But that wasn’t the focus of their conversation. The president as an aside asked Mayor Faulconer what he thought about the border, and the Mayor’s response is that we welcome federal investment in our land ports of entry. We’re the busiest border crossing in the Western Hemisphere, and federal dollars help us make it easier to trade, cross legally and commute across the border. Mayor Faulconer does not support a wall from sea to shining sea. Let’s invest instead on stopping sewage from the Tijuana River Valley.”
There was a time when crossings between Baja California and San Diego were frequent and easy. But after initial construction in the late ’80s and the push of Operation Gatekeeper in 1994, the area’s illegal crossings were stemmed considerably. You might even say “like day and night.” Twenty-five years ago. With fences.
Listen to the President brag about the visit and also apparently having been the designer of the new wall himself:
Featured image via screen capture
Like what you see here? Join the discussion on Facebook over at Americans For Sanity!
