Well, this is awkward. The Daily Show dug up footage of Donald Trump, during a 2004 address at Wagner College on Staten Island—they gave him an honorary doctorate in humane letters—giving graduates the following advice:
Never, ever give up. Don’t give up. Don’t allow it to happen. If there’s a concrete wall in front of you, go through it. Go over it. Go around it. But get to the other side of that wall.
That’s very inspirational advice, and it’s probably served the people who were there that day very well. One of them even became President of the United States! But it’s hard to square with Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen’s comments on the same topic:
From Congress I would ask for wall. We need wall.
Trevor Noah looked for answers for this discrepancy in Trump’s Oval Office address, but what he found was just a whole lot of sniffing:
It’ll be fun watching Sarah Sanders try to explain the difference between Trump’s metaphorical wall from 2004 and his equally metaphorical wall from 2018. But any negative effect this embarrassing clip has on Trump’s popularity will have to be tempered with the positive effect from the other Trump clip in the same segment. Noah took Trump’s Oval Office address and edited out everything but the drugs and violence, and the effect is sort of a Reader’s Digest condensed version of Trump’s message:
Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs. … Meth, heroin, cocaine … More Americans will die from drugs this year … sex crimes … violent killings … murdered … raped … beaten … beheading … dismembering … blood … blood.
Whatever else you can say about Trump, he definitely promises his supporters exactly what they want.
