How can we take President Donald Trump seriously when he lies straight to our faces? The current government shutdown is nothing more then an outburst from an unfit political leader.

In fact, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer called the shutdown a temper tantrum, saying, “The president of the United States having failed to get Mexico to pay for his ineffective, unnecessary border wall and unable to convince the Congress or the American people to foot the bill has shut down the government. American democracy doesn’t work that way. We don’t govern by temper tantrum. No president should pound the table and demand he gets his way or else the government shuts down.”

Recently Trump addressed this issue to the American people during a prime time address, and unsurprisingly he flat out lied to the people either out of ignorance or lack of knowledge on the immigration issue in our country. The Washington Post annotated his prime time address and fact checked his statements, and the results are unsettling.

To note a couple of Trump’s statements that stood out, he continued with the same rhetoric he did while campaigning (which has been fact checked as well), and it is still false. He brought up the drug smuggling crisis across the U.S-Mexico border, specifically the smuggling of heroin and how it affects the American population.

“Every week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90 percent of which floods across from our southern border. More Americans will die from drugs year than were killed in the entire Vietnam War.” Trump said.

Aaron Blake from The Washington Post pointed out how Trump left out the fact that almost all of the drugs come through legal points of entry, in which case an expanded border wall would not help with this crisis. Blake cited statistics gathered by the Drug Enforcement Administration to back up this fact.

Trump went on to say that the only reason the government is shut down for one reason only: because the Democrats in office refuse to fund border security. Blake points out that this directly contradicts what Trump said last month in an Oval Office meeting with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Schumer.

“I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck, because the people of this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. So I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it. The last time you shut it down, it didn’t work. I will take the mantle of shutting down.” Trump said during the Oval Office meeting.

According to CNN, this is currently the second-longest government shutdown in history. If the shutdown lasts until Saturday it will break the previous record set in 1995-1996 at 21 days.

This shutdown is affecting a number of Americans across the country, and the president is not being honest about his motives for this shutdown. Only time will tell what will happen if Trump does not receive the funding he finds necessary to solve the border crisis. Please read the fact checks done by The Post to see what else is inaccurate in this prime-time address.