As Donald Trump stepped up his lies last week on a series of issues — not just to fend off the Trump-Russia investigation but also to get his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and to distance himself from his policy of separating immigrant children from parents — an example of Trump making up a falsehood on the spot.
As part of his campaign against undocumented immigrants — and to cover up his reference to them as “animals” earlier this month — Trump went to Bethpage, New York to denounce the “MS-13 gangs”, the group that started in Los Angeles and spread through part of North and Central America.
Trump initially says, “Last month, MS-13 reportedly called for its members here on Long Island” with the written script completing the sentence, “to kill a cop”.
But Trump then improvises that Long Island is “where I essentially grew up” — although his boyhood home is actually in the borough of Queen — and alters the script: “They killed a cop for the sake of making a statement. They wanted to make a statement, so they killed a cop, a policeman.”
That killing never occurred. But, comfortable that no one will call him out over the deception, Trump has supported his proclamation that the US has the “worst immigration laws in the world”, with the gang’s Central American members supposedly exploting “loopholes” to “enter the country as unaccompanied alien minors”.
Which is a statement which can justify the get-tough separation policy, taking children away from parents or detaining them if they cross the border on their own.
The passage starts from 3:59:
