Fentanyl Busts And Trump As A Reverse Lefty Guns

A wise guy’s always right. Even when he’s wrong, he’s right.

— Lefty (Al Pacino)

One of the (many) miracles of Donald Trump’s stupidity is that he’s the opposite of the famous quote excerpted above from Donnie Brasco.

That is, even when Trump’s right, he’s wrong.

For nearly four years (and really, before that) Trump has railed against the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States from Mexico. One of the central selling points for his border wall is that drugs (not to mention “women taped up in vans”) don’t come in through official ports of entry.

Well, on Thursday, Trump got a veritable God send of a headline out of Arizona when  U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced the largest-ever seizure of Fentanyl. Some 254 pounds of powder and pills were discovered stashed away in a truck carrying cucumbers.

You really couldn’t ask for a “better” headline than that if what you’re trying to do is convince a skeptical American public (and recalcitrant Democrats on Capitol Hill) of the need for beefed-up border security. And indeed, Trump seized on the story, tweeting the following:

Our great U.S. Border Patrol Agents made the biggest Fentanyl bust in our Country’s history. Thanks, as always, for a job well done!

What he didn’t mention was that the drugs were seized at the Nogales port of entry and that the shipment was detected by scanning equipment and a canine team.

In other words, other than the Fentanyl (and the meth found with it), Thursday’s seizure was actually terrible news for Trump’s wall pitch. The largest Fentanyl border bust in history occurred at a port of entry and it was attributable to technology and drug-sniffing dogs. That is precisely the process that Trump claims isn’t working.

MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff summed it up best:

CBP announces *massive* seizure of fentanyl at AZ border. Guess where? Port of entry, not desert. Guess who? Mexican national, not Central American asylum seeker. Guess how? In a tractor-trailer, not a backpack. Guess what didn’t stop it? A wall. Agents using technology did.

There you go. And this is yet another example of Trump shooting himself in the foot (figuratively speaking). This should have been a (“big league”) boon to his domestic policy agenda, but instead, it makes Democrats’ point for them.

Again: “Trump is always wrong. Even when he’s right, he’s wrong.”

Undeterred by the merciless lampooning of yesterday’s press availability and seemingly oblivious to how nervous everyone is about the prospect of a national emergency declaration, Trump decided to hold court with reporters again on Friday from the White House. Just like Thursday, it was all kinds of silly.

Trump continues to insist that he’s “building a lot of wall”, a contention that, for the thousandth time, just isn’t true. Nobody is “building a lot of wall”. He’s just making this up on the assumption that if he says it enough, his base will believe it. Sadly, that’s probably a safe assumption. He also reiterated that a national emergency is just as likely as not.

You’ve got to love that last bit: “Democrats know walls work”. Apparently exhausted with trying to convince anybody on the other side of the aisle that walls do in fact “work” and at wit’s end with Democrats saying publicly that they will never be convinced, Trump has now resorted to claiming that secretly, Democrats do think “walls work”, they just won’t say it.

He went on to call foreign aide to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala “a disgrace.” It still hasn’t (and never will) occur to him that the only way to discourage people from fleeing dangerous circumstances is to try and help improve those circumstances. Cutting foreign aide does the opposite.

Somehow, things got immeasurably worse (and far more incoherent) after that. For example, at one point Trump actually pivoted to the “Da Nang Dick” thing for no reason.

Honestly, we couldn’t even muster the enthusiasm to chop up the rest of the video for you because at this point, it’s like listening to your half-drunk, racist uncle tell you what he would do if he were President.

Unfortunately, our half-drunk, racist uncle is in fact President.