One of the most frequent personal observations expressed by Donald Trump is his insistence that he is a bottomless vessel of boundless knowledge. He claims that he knows more about defense than his generals; more about climate than scientists; and more about the law than his army of lawyers. He may be right about the latter considering that Rudy Giuliani is the head of his laughably inept legal team.

However, the evidence of Trump’s brilliance must be buried deeper than the Mariana Trench. He is wrong more often than a chimpanzee predicting the stock market. Although it’s hard to know whether his mistakes are due to common ignorance or, more likely, to flagrant lying. And so much of what he professes to know absolutely is just stuff he heard on Fox News, another disseminator of poorly manufactured fabrications. It’s a sign of his acutely shallow intellect that he relies so heavily on the alternative facts of a TV network staffed by proud foes of intelligence.

Nevertheless, that’s where Trump got his latest bit of bullpucky regarding the nearly 7,000 migrants marching toward the United States in hopes of escaping the poverty and violence in their home countries. Trump posted a tweet on Monday morning that was chock full of falsehoods with racist overtones:

Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

Trump is so enamored of his ability to invent cute nicknames for the objects of his wrath that he came up with one for imposing crises. But the “National Emergy” that he’s panicking about is a figment of his overactive imagination. Especially the part about the “unknown Middle Easterners” allegedly mixing in. Trump appears to have absorbed this non-fact from the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. Co-host Pete Hegseth ranted incoherently about the migrant “caravan” in a segment that backed up Trump’s asinine proposal to deploy the military to confront peaceful, unarmed, refugee families. But the centerpiece of this nonsense was the allegation that members of ISIS were infiltrating the marchers (video below):

Hegseth: You got the president of Guatemala saying to a local newspaper down there just last week, they caught over a hundred ISIS fighters in Guatemala trying to use this caravan or other processes.
Steve Doocy: Are we sure that’s true?
Hegseth: He talked to their local newspaper, we don’t know it, it hasn’t been verified. But even one poison pill is too many in a caravan.

Virtually none of that is true. To begin with, President Jimmy Morales of Guatemala didn’t talk to a local newspaper. He made remarks at the Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America, an event whose attendees included Vice-President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Secondly, President Morales was not talking about ISIS fighters caught in conjunction with the migrant caravan. In fact, the caravan had not even begun when Morales spoke at the Conference. Thirdly, there is no evidence whatsoever that any apprehensions of terrorists were ever made. And finally, in his remarks Morales said that the alleged terrorists had all been deported, in which case they would no longer be in the country or able to sneak into the caravan. Therefore, no National Emergy.

From that basket of nothingness, the ultra-conservative shills at Judicial Watch published a thoroughly false report that implied that Morales had revealed an ongoing effort by ISIS to clandestinely enter the U.S. by disguising themselves as migrants. That work of fiction was picked up by Fox News, and then blasted out by Trump to his millions of Deplorable Twitter followers. And to reiterate, none of it was true. But that didn’t stop Trump from doubling with another inane tweet:

Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

Let’s just set aside the fact that Congress had drafted a comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform bill, but Trump’s stubborness to compromise killed it. Now he’s imploring his cult followers to “think of and blame the Democrats” whenever they see refugees seeking asylum in America. Note that he doesn’t want you to think of the hardships they’ve suffered, or even the impact on the U.S. by their being granted asylum. He sees this a purely political matter and he’s exploiting these human tragedies to try to offset the expected Republican losses in the upcoming midterm election.

What’s worse is that Trump’s response to this is to threaten to cut off aid to the countries these refugees are fleeing. So the inhumane conditions that led to their exodus will now get exponentially worse and more of them will take the risks to escape. That’s the sort of thinking that can only come from someone steeped in ignorance and hatred. It’s the thinking of television pundits whose expertise is in celebrity gossip. And sadly, it’s typical of what America has been having to tolerate for as long as Trump has occupied our White House.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.