Here's what happens when your spin is so lame even ABC's right wing White House correspondent Jonathan Karl can't sit and listen to it without calling you out for it. OMB Director and now acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney made an appearance on This Week and tried pushing his boss' lie that Mexico is somehow going to pay for the border wall through negotiating better trade deals with them, and because they've agreed to house asylum seekers, and Karl reminded him that doesn't equal Mexico paying for his stupid border wall:
KARL: But let me ask you -- I mean, I was out with the president throughout the presidential campaign. Mexico was going to pay for this wall, from day one. Let me remind you what he said the day that he announced he was running for president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KARL: Mark his words. Now, the president has forced a government shutdown because he’s insisting that American taxpayers pay for that wall. What gives?
MULVANEY: And if you ask the president, he’ll point you immediately to something else that didn’t get a lot of news in the last couple weeks, which is this new U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, USMCA which is so much better for us than the NAFTA deal that American workers are going to do better, the government is going to do better and you could make the argument that Mexico is paying for it in that fashion. Also --
KARL: But boy, he’s asking for billions of dollars from American taxpayers right now. Hasn’t he broken one of the central promises of his campaign?
MULVANEY: Let me finish, because another story that I don’t think you covered this week, and I don’t know why no one did, is that Mexico has now agreed, for the first time in history, to keep asylum seekers, folks who are trying to get into the USA, on the Mexican side of the border. So these are folks in Mexican facilities maintained by Mexican officials. They’re actually doing more for border security than many Democrats in Congress.
So we really think we’re in a good place in terms of getting the wall built and also getting Mexico to participate in our border security.
KARL: But none of that is Mexico paying for the wall. Let’s just be clear about this …
MULVANEY: Technically. You and I both know that it cannot work exactly like that. I can’t spend any money at the office of management – budge, the Department of Homeland Security can’t actually spend money from Mexico, we have to get it from Treasury.
KARL: I understand that. That’s not the way it sounded during the campaign.
Karl went onto ask Mulvaney whether Trump would be willing to negotiate with Democrats and work out a deal where they exchange citizenship for the Dreamers for his border wall money. Mulvaney admitted that the wall wasn't going to solve our immigration problems, but the question was a ridiculous one to start with, because Trump has already proven he won't negotiate with Democrats on this issue in good faith after the last go around they had with him.
It's good to see the media reminding these people where this money was supposed to come from. Don't expect it to make a dent in Trump's support though. They don't care.
