Donald Trump’s off the wall border stunt goes off the rails

| 5:50 pm EST January 10, 2019
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So much for the notion that Donald Trump was heading to the U.S.-Mexico border so he could have a Mexican pretend to attack him, or so he could declare a national emergency, or anything of the sort. Instead his press conference at the border was weak and absurd, and got precious little cable news attention – and that was before the Democrats blew the whole thing up.

Donald Trump held a meeting with a handful of border patrol people, complete with a table in front of them stocked with guns, drugs, and cash. He was trying to sell the idea that his border wall is necessary because of all the contraband involved, but that went out the window because all of it was actually seized at ports of entry, not at the border.

MSNBC and CNN pretty much treated Trump’s border stunt like it wasn’t newsworthy. Fox News covered part of it, but cut away as soon as Trump began incoherently rambling about people sneaking across the border with electrical tape over their mouths. Not only did the whole event go nowhere, House Democrats dropped their own bomb just when Trump was hoping to get press coverage from his stunt.

The House Oversight Committee, led by new Chairman Elijah Cummings, announced this afternoon that Michael Cohen will be publicly testifying against Donald Trump on February 7th. That’s four weeks away, so why announce it right now? Simple: it wiped out whatever attention Trump’s border stunt might have been getting, and immediately put the focus back on the fact that Trump is a criminal.