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.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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