Tag: Colorado

Trump says US is building a wall in Colorado

President Trump declared Wednesday that the U.S. is building a border wall in Colorado despite the fact that the Western state does not sit on the U.S-Mexico border.

“You know why we’re going to win New Mexico? Because they want safety on their border. And they didn’t have it,” Trump said during a speech at the Shale Insight conference in Pittsburgh.

“And we’re building a wall on the border of New Mexico,” he continued. “And we’re building a wall in Colorado. We’re building a beautiful wall, a big one that really works that you can’t get over, you can’t get under.”

He added, “And we’re building a wall in Texas. And we’re not building a wall in Kansas, but they get the benefit of the walls we just mentioned. And Louisiana’s incredible.”

Colorado sits directly on top of New Mexico, and aside from Trump’s comments, there are no reports that his administration is building a wall in the state.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.

There is a piece of the border wall being built along the Colorado River in Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico.

Lawmakers and other officials knocked Trump for his comments, with Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) tweeting a photo of a U.S. map with a Sharpie outline along the Colorado border.

Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) tagged New Mexico Sens. Martin Heinrich (D) and Tom Udall (D) in a tweet, saying, “Do one of you want to break it to @realDonaldTrump that Colorado’s border is with New Mexico, not Mexico…or should I?” 

George Conway, husband to White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and an outspoken Trump critic, tweeted that “we can confidently say that Mexico is never going to pay for a wall with Colorado.”

[The Hill]

Mother and Daughter With Disabilities Bullied By Trump Supporters At Rally

A young mother says she and her seven-year-old daughter with disabilities had to be escorted out of a Donald Trump rally by Secret Service officers after they were bullied by supporters.

Jennifer Mau went to the Republican nominee’s event in Loveland, Colorado on Monday night, saying she was curious what he would say about people with disabilities.

The mom, who is an undecided voter, said she decided to leave after about 20 minutes.

‘I just wanted to see what a (Trump) rally would be like, because I’ve watched them all over the country,’ she told KMGH.

But once Mau got up to leave with her daughter – who was born with multiple birth defects, including facial anomalies, and no jawbone or ears – that’s when she says the trouble started.

‘Somebody said, “why are you leaving”, and basically that struck a nerve and I said, “why are you here”, because it was all handicapped people, and I said, “why are you here, he makes fun of people like you”.’

She went on to say once she did decide to leave, a woman began following her and hurling abuse at her.

‘She was screaming and yelling at me, saying that if I loved my daughter I would vote for Trump and I need to get educated because he didn’t mock somebody on purpose.

‘It made me sad, it made me want to vomit. Chloe is my life, my heart, I live to advocate for Chloe, to be there for her.’

Mau also said other people at the event said her young girl was beautiful as she left.

Trump has been slammed for mocking a New York Times reporter who has a disability at a rally in South Carolina last November.

The Republican did an impression of Serge Kovaleski – a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who was born with arthrogryposis – that included him putting on a bizarre voice and flailing his limbs around.

Arthrogryposis can cause sufferers’ joints to get stuck in one position and can also see people born with weaker or missing muscles.

(h/t The Daily Mail)

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Trump Rescued by Firefighters Before Blasting Colorado Springs Fire Marshal

When it comes to first responders, Donald Trump plays favorites. It’s no secret that the Republican presidential nominee likes police officers. A lot. But firefighters — that relationship may be just a bit more complicated.

Since Trump’s campaign began, a series of fire officials across the country have become his unwitting nemeses, as Trump publicly grumbles about their enforcement of the capacity restrictions at some of his rally venues.

At a February event in Madison, Ala., for instance, he complained at least twice that the fire marshal had closed the gates of the stadium where he said some 32,000 had come to hear him speak (local estimates put the figure of actual attendees at closer to 10,000). “Let them come in, Mr. Fire Marshal,” Trump said.

In a rare shift earlier this month, Trump had the opposite complaint: Phoenix officials, he said, “broke the fire code” by allowing too many people into the Convention Center room where he’d spoken.

Those numbers didn’t quite jibe with the count of 4,200 to 4,500 his campaign gave reporters at the event — or with the fire department’s own numbers, which fell squarely in the middle of that range.

“Once capacity was reached, we closed the doors. No rules or codes were broken, and no one was in danger at anytime,” Phoenix Fire Department spokeswoman Shelly Jamison told local station KPNX, adding that the Trump campaign had been offered the use of a larger room, but had declined.

So there have been a few fiery attacks over the past few months. But on Friday in Colorado, Trump had a much less heated encounter with the Colorado Springs Fire Department after he and nine others were trapped in an elevator at The Mining Exchange Hotel.

“The firefighters were able to secure the elevator, open the top elevator hatch, lower a ladder into the elevator, which allowed all individuals to self-evacuate, including Mr. Trump, onto the second-floor lobby area,” fire department spokesman Steven Wilch told Colorado station KRDO in a Saturday report. Trump was over an hour late to his event at the University of Colorado campus located in solidly conservative Colorado Springs — but he made it.

If you think that’s the sort of thing that might prompt him to mention the fire department in his remarks at that event, as you may have heard Friday, you’re right! “We have a fire marshal that said we can’t allow more people,” Trump said, as the crowd booed. “….The reason they can’t let them in is because they don’t know what they’re doing.”

Fire Marshal Brett Lacey, the candidate said, was “probably a Democrat, probably a guy that doesn’t get it.”

Trump went on. “Hey, maybe they’re a Hillary person. Could that be possible? Probably,” he said, calling the restriction a “disgraceful situation.”

“This is the kind of thing we have in federal government also, by the way,” he said, “and then you wonder why we’re going to hell. That’s why we’re going to hell.”

Lacey — who was named Civilian of the Year by the department in February for his role responding to a pair of deadly mass shootings in the city — said later that he didn’t mind the dig. He noted that he’d allowed a last-minute boost in the number of individuals allowed in the room, after the Trump campaign reportedly distributed too many tickets. But in an interview with Colorado’s KKTV, the marshal refused to fight fire with fire.

“Sometimes there are people that aren’t very happy with some of the rules and regulations were required to enforce,” Lacey said. “But it doesn’t bother me at all.”

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