White House: AP Report on Use of National Guard to ‘Round-Up’ Illegals is ‘100% Not True’
Ah jeez… One can just imagine ‘fake news’ echoing through the halls of the White House as an Associated Press report reported that the Trump administration was considering the use of National Guard troops to round-up illegal aliens.
The Trump administration is considering a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants, including millions living nowhere near the Mexico border, according to a draft memo obtained by The Associated Press.
Without any confirmation from the White House and the use of more questionable sourcing, the AP ran the story and it was picked up by news outlets across the world.
Just before taking off in Marine One on Friday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that the story was false.
“That is 100% not true. It is false. It is irresponsible to be saying this,” Spicer said. “There is no effort at all to round up, to utilize the National Guard to round up illegal immigrants.”
Spicer also firmly stated that the memo was “not a White House document.”
Later Friday Spicer confirmed that “Secretary Kelly did not draft that memo” while unable to answer who authored the document, the press secretary said that “it wasn’t Secretary Kelly or at his direction.”
DHS officials have confirmed that the leaked memo was a draft that never made it to the secretary’s desk.
The memo follows a long string of false information leaking from the White House likely from Obama hold-overs interested in discrediting President Trump and his administration.
*update 2/17/17: Comments on AP story added from Spicer’s afternoon press gathering and DHS confirmation of that position.