“Finish the Wall” is President Donald Trump’s slogan, which he brought Monday to El Paso, Texas in a rally to continue his push for the $5.7 billion border wall.
Fox News said the president kicked off his 2020 re-election campaign with the El Paso rally.
Banners with his slogan adorned the El Paso County Coliseum, where the rally took place at 9 p.m. ET, The Hill said:
Trump last week in his State of the Union address used the border city of El Paso as an example of border walls working. He said during the speech that El Paso “used to have extremely high rates of violent crime, one of the highest in the country, and considered one of our nation’s most dangerous cities.”Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities,” he said.
The re-election campaign on Monday released a video with the voices of El Paso residents who have lived in their border community before – and after – the construction of a wall.
According to a campaign statement on the video:
As one resident in the video recounted, “They put the fence up and ever since then, the crime rate has gone down dramatically.” Another talked about how the wall saved their community: “When you don’t put up a border wall, that’s immoral. El Paso is our community.”
These are ordinary Americans, not Washington politicians, who have seen first-hand how a border wall brought safety and security back to their community.
Another resident in the campaign video talks of how, before El Paso’s wall, corpses would be discovered in the desert from where “coyotes,” or human traffickers, would abandon people.
“You put the wall up, it will save lives,” the man said.
At the rally, Trump spoke about record low unemployment rates for people of color, Breitbart said.
The Democrats, of course, thundered against the president’s call for border security to protect Americans.
Liberal media darling former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX-16) held a counter-march and rally less than half a mile away from Trump’s rally, NBC News said. The possible 2020 Democratic presidential candidate planed to “celebrate our community” and “tell the true story about the border.”
KXAN reported on how a potential O’Rourke presidential candidacy could cause hand-wringing among some progressives since he is a “white man with a skinny resume.”
Monday’s spectacle in El Paso will present a coalescence of circumstances offering O’Rourke a large platform to announce his next steps: a face-off filled with Hollywood drama, the attention of the national press and an aura of authenticity.
During his rally, Trump mocked O’Rourke for considering a presidential run “fresh off of his LOSS,” the Breitbart story said, referencing the Democrat’s loss in the Senate race against U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
Meanwhile, while Democrats are worrying over O’Rourke’s demographic credentials, local sheriffs appeared in an Instagram video with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to voice their support for providing funding for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
In the video, one sheriff talks about illegals crossing the border and says, “If you do anything to cut ICE funding, you devastate our community.”
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Jason M. Reynolds has more than 20 years’ experience as a journalist at outlets of all sizes.
