× Expand Tim Tucciarone/U.S. Customs and Border Protection Construction workers put up a new section of wall at the border at the Chula Vista Area of Responsibility, California, on June 19, 2018.

“Wow. Whoa. That is some group of people—thousands!”

Those were the first nine words of then-candidate Trump’s presidential campaign announcement at Trump Tower. A few moments later, he added, “This is beyond anyone's expectations, there’s been no crowd like this.” The other presidential candidates “didn’t have anybody there,” he said, rhetorically asking, “How are they going to beat ISIS” if they can’t even get a big crowd of supporters to show up? And just like that, the gaslighting had begun: In reality, the crowd was a few hundred and nearly all were actors who Trump paid $50 to hold signs and cheer for him.

This stagecraft was nothing, though, compared to to the brown boogie man he has since conjured up at our Southern border, and the wall he says we must build to protect ourselves.

Nearly four years later, much has changed. He now is President, has real supporters and legitimately big crowds that feverishly believe more than ever that the boogie man at our Southern border is real and a wall is desperately needed.

Oh, and the “Who's paying for it” part? That’s changed a lot as well! In his announcement, he said, “I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”

Since 2000, the number of border agents have approximately doubled, while the number of number of border apprehensions of people without proper documentation has dropped by more 80 percent. As New York magazine’s Mattathias Schwartz put it, “the Border Patrol has never had less work to do or more resources to do it with.”

Yet, this week Trump received air time for a national address that he titled, the “National Security crises on our Southern Border” to defend his shutting down the government to build a border wall.

Curiously, the day before, his former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, had said, “If it’s a crisis, act like it. Declare a national security emergency on the southern border.”

To that end, Trump in his address rolled out a tired medley of the same baseless, fear-mongering claims he’s been making since his announcement.

Once again, Trump falsely claimed, after listing several heinous crimes, that undocumented immigrants are making us less safe, at one point asking, “How much more American blood must we shed before Congress does its job?” (As several studies have illuminated, the opposite is true: The United States would actually be less safe without undocumented immigrants.)

Trump referred to refugees, who are allowed under U. S. and international law to show up at any point in our border and request asylum, as “border security loopholes.”

Once again, he dishonestly conflated drugs that come across our Southern border and the opioid epidemic, with illegal border crossings, saying, “Every week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90 percent of which flows across our Southern border.” He left out that most of the opioid epidemic is caused by misused prescription drugs that originate in the United States, and that nearly all of illegal drugs that flow across the Southern border are smuggled in via vehicles driven by properly documented drivers through official border crossings.

In other words, he left out that having a wall would not fix this problem.

Trump referred to refugees, who are allowed under U. S. and international law to show up at any point in our border and request asylum, as “border security loopholes” that needed to be closed so they can be “returned back home.” He didn’t mention that going “back home” is often tantamount to a death sentence.

He also didn’t mention that his (likely illegal) policy of only allowing small numbers of asylum-seekers to enter the United States each day at official border crossings is forcing refugees to enter at non-official border crossings and then turn themselves in.

Trump has shut down the government and is threatening to declare a national state of emergency to forcibly appropriate the billions necessary to build the wall without Congressional approval.

Some might ask why Trump would not have pulled this stunt at any point over the last two years when his party controlled Congress. Why now—after the Dems took back the House in a 2018 campaign that turned largely on the rejection of Trump’s southern border ginned-up hysteria?

The answer? Trump’s political survival in the short term and in 2020 is dependent in keeping his base foaming at the mouth and he realizes they are much like pro wrestling fans: Some really believe in the imaginary brown boogie man Trump has carefully built since day one and the rest just really like the racist stagecraft of it all.

Neither wants to be told it’s all fake.

If only we could go back to the days when these people were paid actors and not a frightening 45 percent of the country that approves or is unwilling to say they disapprove of Trump.

That’s the national emergency.