President Donald Trump has been obsessively repeating a horror tale of trafficked women in cars at the southern border, their mouths taped shut, so they “can’t even breathe.” The problem is that trafficked women and border officials apparently have no idea what he’s talking about. Now Rachel Maddow, along with some media outlets, believe it could be possible that Trump witnessed it with his very own eyes — on the violent movie “Sicario: Day of the Soldado.”
The film shows such a scene at the Mexican border, eerily similar to what Trump has described. There is also a scene of Muslim prayer rugs in the southern desert, which has also popped up in a Trump tweet. He has talked about the smugglers’ amazing cars, just like in the movie.
All are “plot points in the same movie — which is fiction,” Maddow emphasized Monday.
“Now in any normal administration it would be insane to suggest ... even joke about the president of the United States seeing stuff in a movie ... and maybe thinking it was real — or at least real enough to justify an actual military deployment of thousands of active duty U.S. troops to the border,” she said.
On Saturday Vox reported that an email was sent out by a Customs and Border Protection official following the president’s claims, asking agents to immediately forward “any information” about taped women. The agency has yet to comment on Trump’s stories which he repeated 22 times in 10 days.
The Washington Post reached out to border personnel, women who had once been trafficked and immigration organizations, and were unable to find a single example of what the president was talking about.
Trump’s movie-watching habits could be pertinent when the House Armed Services Committee convenes a hearing Tuesday about the border and why exactly troops were deployed.
Check out Maddow in the video above, then see if the clips below ring any bells.
