Here's the truth behind Trump's baseless and creepy talk of 'tied up' and 'bound' trafficking victims

Matthew Chapman
25 January 2019
Donald J. Trump/Shutterstock

During President Donald Trump's speech totally capitulating to Democrats and ending his shutdown, one of the most notable moments was when he entered into a long-winded speech on human trafficking and described, in disturbing detail, women being bound and gagged with duct tape.

"Human traffickers, the victims are women and children," said Trump. "Maybe to a lesser extent, believe it or not, children. Women are tied up, they're bound, duct tape put around their faces, around their mouths, in many cases they can't even breathe, they're put in the backs of cars or vans or trucks. They don't go through your port of entry. They make a right turn, going very quickly. They go into the desert areas, or whatever areas you could look at. And as soon as there's no protection, they make a left or a right into the United States of America, there's nobody to catch them, there's nobody to find them. They can't come through the port, because if they come through the port, people will see four women sitting in a van with tape around their face and around their mouth. Can't have that. And that problem, because of the Internet, is the biggest problem, it's never been like this before, that you can imagine, the worst level of human trafficking in the history of the world."

"This is not a United States problem, this is a world problem," Trump concluded. "But they come through areas where they have no protection, where they have no steel barriers, where they have no walls. And we can stop almost a hundred percent of that."

Watch below:

This speech was completely ad-libbed — the teleprompter said only, "Talk about Human Trafficking". And as often happens when Trump ad-libs his remarks, everything he said was completely wrong.

First, obviously, this is not "the worst level of human trafficking in the history of the world" — just a few centuries ago, remember, there was a completely overt transoceanic slave trade. But second, Trump's account of women with duct tape over their mouths appears to be entirely his own creation — the Washington Post notes that has been telling similar anecdotes all month, sometimes describing the women as being gagged with "blue tape" or "electrical tape," and being loaded "in a back seat of a car or a van — three, four, five, six, seven at a time." Nine aid workers and academics told the Post that they have never heard of a trafficking case like the ones Trump keeps describing.

The president's fascination with taped-up women is clearly creepy. But it is also an extension of one of his oldest, most infamous campaign tropes — that Mexico is full of rapists. Trump has clearly fallen in love with this narrative, even though it has no basis in fact, because it hits all of the notes of his anti-immigrant agenda. And he is likely to continue using it.