January 4, 2019

We Annotated the White House’s Wildly Misleading Border Security Briefing to Congress

It’s about as accurate as you’d expect.

Evan Vucci/AP

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On Thursday, with the government shutdown approaching its third week, the White House summoned congressional leaders to the White House for a border security briefing. The White House press office griped on Friday that members of Congress “did not want to hear the presentation.” But Donald Trump was not deterred.

The president directed his staff to hand-deliver the slideshow to every member of Congress. The White House also shared the presentation with reporters. The eight-slide presentation is an exercise in how to mislead the public with statistics. Below is an annotated version.

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We've never been very good at being conservative.

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This is no time to come up short. It's time to fight like hell, as our namesake would tell us to do, for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme agenda, where facts matter, and where accountability has a chance at the polls and in the press. If you value our reporting and you can right now, please help us dig out of the $100,000 hole we're starting our new budgeting cycle in with an always-needed and always-appreciated donation today.

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