Consumed with Trump Derangement Syndrome, liberal journalists and political pundits tend to overreact to nearly everything said, done, or implied by President Donald Trump.
This week’s edition of the media freak out was triggered by the rumor that Trump had offered presidential pardons to any administration official who might run afoul of the law in the process of building the border wall.
Get it done
That rumor appears to have begun in the wake of an article from The Washington Post which claimed that President Trump, growing anxious with the slow progress of border wall construction, had instructed certain members of his administration to ignore or skirt any laws or regulations that stood in the way of construction.
That would include fast-tracking the contractor bidding process, ignoring environmental regulations, and aggressively using eminent domain to seize land along the border from unwilling private owners, the Post reported.
President Trump reportedly offered up assurance to administration members concerned about the potential consequences they could face for bending and breaking rules in the process of hastening the border wall construction — a presidential pardon.
“Don’t worry, I’ll pardon you,” Trump was alleged to have said during a meeting in which some officials were said to have informed him that some of his orders to speed up the construction process were potentially illegal or unworkable.
It must be noted that the entire article was couched on unverifiable assertions from anonymous sources identified only as “current and former officials” in the Trump administration.
Of course, the anonymous sourcing didn’t stop the rest of the mainstream media from accepting the article’s claims and engaging in yet another full-on freak out about the allegedly lawless Trump administration.
Trump: It’s “fake news”
President Trump wasted little time in batting down the report as “fake news,” meant to harm his reputation and chances at re-election in 2020.
“Another totally Fake story in the Amazon Washington Post (lobbyist) which states that if my Aides broke the law to build the Wall (which is going up rapidly), I would give them a Pardon. This was made up by the Washington Post only in order to demean and disparage — FAKE NEWS!” the president tweeted on Wednesday.
Between elected Democrats refusing to appropriate funds for the wall and leftist activists using lawsuits to delay progress, President Trump has faced inordinate obstruction to his efforts to improve border security.
Still, work continues — if rather slower than Trump would like. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol released a video last week showing miles of new barriers that have been built in Arizona. Watch below:
Construction crews continue work on the new border wall system along the SW border near San Luis, AZ. In partnership with @USACEHQ, CBP has constructed over 60 miles of new border wall system along the SW border since 2017 and expects to complete 450 miles by the end of 2020. pic.twitter.com/ZMVqVteMUN
— CBP (@CBP) August 25, 2019