# Donald Trumps Prime Time Immigration Address On January 8, 2019, President Donald Trump delivered a nine-minute prime-time speech from the Oval Office asking for $5 billion in border wall funding during the ongoing federal shutdown. The address became a live fact-checking event online, with journalists and Twitter users rebutting the president's claims about drugs, crime, and a "humanitarian crisis" as he spoke. ## Overview Donald Trump's Prime-Time Immigration Address was a televised speech delivered from the Oval Office on the evening of January 8, 2019[1]. Airing simultaneously on NBC, ABC, CBS and other major broadcast networks, the president argued for a $5 billion appropriation for a southern border wall and framed conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border as a "humanitarian crisis" while the partial federal shutdown stretched into its third week[1]. The address drew immediate fact-checking coverage from national news desks. NBC News noted that overall border crossings had been falling for years, with roughly 415,517 apprehensions in fiscal year 2017, far below the 1 to 1.6 million per year the U.S. counted from the 1980s through the mid-2000s[1]. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer delivered a rebuttal on the same networks moments after Trump finished[3]. ## How It Spread Within minutes of the broadcast, reporters and Twitter users posted line-by-line rebuttals while Reddit's r/politics and r/The_Donald hosted megathreads and watch parties throughout the address. Toronto Star Washington correspondent Daniel Dale drew more than 8,500 retweets and 30,000 likes during the speech noting that most of the heroin Trump described comes through legal ports of entry, and actor Aaron Booth's resurfaced Trump quote from December 11, 2018 taking credit for the shutdown ("I will be the one to shut it down") pulled 1,700 retweets in the same 24-hour window[3]. NBC's fact-check pointed out that Vice President Mike Pence's earlier claim of 60,000 monthly border attempters fell well below the 73,000 to 223,000 monthly apprehensions the southwest border saw back in 2000[1]. NBC also flagged that the "300 citizens killed by heroin weekly" figure Trump cited overstated the border's role in heroin smuggling, since most such drugs enter through legal ports of entry rather than unwalled desert[1]. The shutdown ran a total of 35 days, ending on January 25, 2019 without the wall funding Trump had requested during the address[2]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Donald Trumps Prime Time Immigration Address? It was a nine-minute Oval Office speech President Donald Trump delivered on January 8, 2019 asking for $5 billion to fund a southern border wall during the 2018-19 federal shutdown[1]. ### Where did Donald Trumps Prime Time Immigration Address come from? The address aired live from the Oval Office on the evening of January 8, 2019, carried simultaneously by NBC, ABC, CBS and other major broadcast networks[1]. ### What does Donald Trumps Prime Time Immigration Address mean? Online, the address is remembered for the wave of real-time fact-checking it triggered, with news desks like NBC rebutting Trump's claims about border crossings, heroin flows, and terrorism as he spoke[1]. ### How do you use Donald Trumps Prime Time Immigration Address? It isn't a reusable meme template but a political event; people reference it by quoting Trump's "humanitarian crisis" framing or by pointing to the record 35-day shutdown that surrounded it[2]. ### Is Donald Trumps Prime Time Immigration Address still popular? It's now historical rather than active, referenced as a set-piece of the 2018-19 shutdown that ended on January 25, 2019 without the wall funding Trump requested[2]. ## References 1. [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/fact-check-trump-claims-southern-border-crisis-n956421]() 2. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%9319_United_States_federal_government_shutdown]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/donald-trumps-prime-time-immigration-address]() 4. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpYnHBKf3Gs]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/donald-trumps-prime-time-immigration-address Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library