There’s a clip starting to go viral from yesterday’s press conference where President Trump appears to say that coyotes — the 4-legged kind, not the one involved with human smuggling — are causing problems at the U.S.-Mexico border:
“A nation without borders is a nation not at all. Without borders, we have the reign of chaos, crime, cartels and believe it or not, coyotes,” Trump said of the Senate spending bill he's refusing to sign due to it not meeting his demands on border security funding pic.twitter.com/aX3BgpTXX3
— POLITICO (@politico) December 20, 2018
BuzzFeed’s John Stanton, for example, called the comment a “dangerous level of stupid”:
Clara Jeffery from Mother Jones also thought the president was talking about animals:
Seems like Trump thinks he's talking about the animal coyotes and not the traffickers/guides. ?♀️ https://t.co/IPlJ5Zh6Ny
— Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) December 20, 2018
And Vox ‘splained it for everyone:
Does Trump think there are actual coyotes coming over the border? Maybe. https://t.co/B4D4RSS7iY
— Vox (@voxdotcom) December 21, 2018
But as the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake helpfully points out, the president knows exactly what kind of coyotes he’s talking about:
Trump did a weird ad-lib yesterday in which he said, "Without borders, we have the reign of chaos, crime, and — believe it or not — coyotes.”
Some think he's unaware that human traffickers are called "coyotes" and thought it was the animal. (1/)https://t.co/tkITj0PjVw
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) December 21, 2018
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I mean, it's possible. But he has talked about coyotes before.
June 21: "But they really came up with coyotes. You know what a coyote is. Not good. These are not good people. They were sent up here with human traffickers." (2/)
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) December 21, 2018
And on June 20: "2,000 are with the parents, and 10,000 came up with some really horrible people, in some cases. You have the coyotes, you have the traffickers — the human traffickers." (3/)
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) December 21, 2018
FWIW, the June 21 comment came from prepared remarks, whereas he seemed to be speaking off the cuff on June 20.
It's weird, yes. But he seemed to be familiar with "coyotes" on June 20, at least, so this would require him to have forgotten. (4/)
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) December 21, 2018
It's possible he just flubbed it in the moment — tried too hard to do an ad-lib, saw "coyote" and didn't make the connection. But he seems to have known what a coyote was before. (5/5)
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) December 21, 2018
Hopefully the president will say something about “drug mules” at the next presser and the libs can do this all over again.
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