Trump: No, I never promised Mexico would pay for my wall
On This Day In 2017: Trump backtracks
Everybody remembers it. EVERYBODY.
Trump promised us he’d build a wall, and that Mexico would pay for it. That was nonsense at the time, and it’s still nonsense. But it’s easy to forget just how crucial his pledge was to his 2016 win.
Just days after becoming president, once it became obvious that Trump was incapable of getting a wall built—or getting Mexico to pay for it—he started to backtrack.
For example, OTDI 2017, in a mealy-mouthed way, he said only that he was working on plans that “…will generate revenue from Mexico which would pay for the wall, if we decide to go that route.”
And then this remarkable ridiculousness: “When I said Mexico would pay for the wall in front of thousands and thousands of people...obviously I never said this, and I never meant they were going to write out a check,” Trump claimed.
Watch this compilation from The Washington Post and decide for yourself:
But more importantly, let’s look at the bigger picture.
When his supporters watch that tape now, don’t they think, “That is a con man right there. Well, I fell for it back then, but there’s no way I’m going to fall for him again”?
As Trump might phrase it, in the Olden Days, the good people would have run that clown out of town with pitchforks for insulting their intelligence like that.
Actually, you don’t need to go back to Olden Days. George HW Bush was voted out of office in large part because he reneged on his key campaign promise, “No new taxes.”
Trump suffered the same fate in 2020.
Will he again in 2024?