On Tuesday night – after weeks of butting heads with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi – Donald Trump finally delivered his State of the Union address. During his speech, Trump said plenty of incorrect statements (The New York Times reported that he made at least 10 false, misleading, or exaggerated comments) that made people side-eye him. From the very beginning, it seems Rep. Veronica Escobar was not here for his speech.
When Trump started off, he talked about how both parties can work together to get things done. “There is a new opportunity in American politics if only we have the courage together to seize it,” Trump said. As people clapped, the camera panned to Escobar, who had an incredulous look on her face. She seemingly said “no mames.”
While some have incorrectly attributed the moment to when Trump incorrectly said that a border wall has led to a decline in crime in El Paso – Escobar’s hometown – many are sure that she did utter these words. (And the video is pretty convincing, tbh.)
But it’s not like Escobar didn’t react to Trump’s comments about El Paso. The New York Times reports that during this part of the speech, Escobar looked “visibly angry” and that she crossed her arms as she said, “Oh my God, oh my God.”
“The border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crime – one of the highest in the entire country, and considered one of our nation’s most dangerous cities,” he said. “Now, immediately upon its building, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of the safest cities in our country.”
Since then, she and many others have debunked his lie. Escobar has used Twitter to call out the statement, and has urged Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn to also speak out.
As Escobar and many others have pointed out, El Paso’s crime rate had already dropped significantly before the border wall was built. It actually had one of the lowest crime rates in cities of that size.