Monday marked the beginning of President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaigning season, which he started by attacking the Green New Deal and socialism.
Speaking in El Paso, Texas, Trump told the crowd that he had skipped being briefed on it in favor of delivering his remarks to them. He also focused on a concrete potential contender in the next presidential election, Beto O’Rourke.
The President continued by dismissing the proposed Green New Deal as a “high school term paper that got a low mark,” and saying Democratic policy proposals all had to do “with 2020 and the election.”
“But I really don’t like their policies of taking away your car, taking away your airplane flights, of ‘let’s hop a train to California’, or ‘you’re not allowed to own cows anymore!'” he added, referring to the resolution championed by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats.
Trump then said that Democrats needed to cease being “angry” and “start being partners” and went on to attack O’Rourke, whom he deemed “a young man who has got very little going for himself except he’s got a great first name.”
During his nearly hour-and-a-half-long speech, President Trump also spent some time touting his accomplishments and criticizing investigations into him and his campaign. In repeating his claim of no collusion, Trump again made an unfounded accusation against Hilary Clinton, saying “that’s where the collusion is.”
Trump also used the rally to make his case in favor of building the long-promised wall, echoing his comments from last week that it has lowered crime rates in El Paso, although the facts did not support his claim.
During his February 5 State of the Union speech, Trump said “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. Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities.”
However, an analysis of FBI crimes data and city law enforcement data shows that violent crime in El Paso peaked in 1993 and dropped years before the construction of the city’s border fence began in 2008. In fact, El Paso Times found that between 2006 and 2011, violent crime in the city increased by 17 percent.
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