We Annotated the White House’s Wildly Misleading Border Security Briefing to Congress

It’s about as accurate as you’d expect.

Evan Vucci/AP

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On Thursday, with the government shutdown approaching its third week, the White House summoned congressional leaders to the White House for a border security briefing. The White House press office griped on Friday that members of Congress “did not want to hear the presentation.” But Donald Trump was not deterred.

The president directed his staff to hand-deliver the slideshow to every member of Congress. The White House also shared the presentation with reporters. The eight-slide presentation is an exercise in how to mislead the public with statistics. Below is an annotated version.

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It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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