He took the stage to chants of “four more years!” and was applauded for mentioning how much he’d done for border patrol agents. His aides handed out Trump’s signature red “Keep America Great” hats to the crowd as he spoke.
“In my State of the Union address, I shared the story of Maria Fuertes, the 92-year-old great-grandmother who was allegedly raped, beaten, and murdered by a criminal illegal alien in New York City,” Trump read from his prepared remarks. Then he went off-script.
“I’ll take the word ‘allegedly’ out, do you mind if I do that?” he said. “The lawyers put it in. If you don’t mind I’ll take it out. She was raped, beaten, and murdered.”
The person charged with Fuertes murder has not been convicted.
Trump also held up pictures of different sections of the wall and bragged about the advanced engineering that’s gone into its construction. The wall’s got anti-climbing tech, which he said has led to firefighters having to pull people off the wall who attempt to climb it and get stuck.
It’s see-through, because near sections of the wall that were opaque, the president said that Border Patrol agents were literally getting hit over the head when traffickers were launching their 150-pound bags of drugs over the wall with catapults.
He’d wanted an imposing concrete wall, but the drug-projectiles are what convinced him it had to be see-through. “As soon as they said that, that was the thing that got me. I said, ‘You’re right, you gotta be able to see what’s on the other side,’” the president said.
