It’s difficult to say whether Trump believes his rhetoric, but either way, his boasts about what troops will do at the border shouldn’t be taken at face value.
Donald Trump sat down with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham this week and, not surprisingly, the president was eager to focus on immigration. He bragged about having “called up the military” to block Central American migrants from seeking asylum in the United States.
It led to an interesting exchange:
The first part of the president’s answer was completely bizarre. We already know, for example, that many of the troops currently at the U. S./Mexico border are, in fact, members of the National Guard. That was true when other recent president’s made deployments, and it’s true now.
But even putting that aside, Trump seemed to draw a distinction between the National Guard and the military. Told that his predecessors dispatched the Guard to the border, this president said, “I’m sending up the military. This is the military.”
Right, but the National Guard is part of the military, too. Given his on-air remarks, it wasn’t clear that Republican understood this rather basic detail.
As for Trump’s boasts about what the military will do under the current policy – I use the term “policy” loosely – the Washington Post ’s fact-check described the president’s rhetoric as “misleading.”
It’s difficult to say whether Trump believes his own rhetoric, but either way, his chest-thumping about what troops will do at the border should not be taken at face value.
