Donald Trump is absolutely certain that his border wall needs to be built. Why? There are loads of reasons! Loads of really, really good reasons which sound weirdly reminiscent of a solid if slightly underwhelming three-star follow up to a much-loved Benicio Del Toro FBI thriller.

"They have the best vehicles you can buy," Trump said of human traffickers working the Mexican border in a briefing early this month. "They have stronger, bigger and faster vehicles than our police have and than ICE has, and the Border Patrol have."

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The Washington Post disputes this, pointing out that the majority of the 570 cars impounded by Customs and Border Protection were mostly slightly knackered saloons made about 15 years ago and with a median value of $2,500 (£1,900). So yes, they might be the best vehicles that money can buy, if the money you have is a large novelty cheque entitling you to exactly one 2004 Volvo S40.

Then there was this tweet:

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Border rancher: “We’ve found prayer rugs out here. It’s unreal.” Washington Examiner People coming across the Southern Border from many countries, some of which would be a big surprise. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2019

The evidence for that seems pretty flimsy to say the least - it's based on one anonymous source in a single Washington Examiner piece who didn't actually show anyone any prayer mats or try to explain why anyone would ditch a prayer mat in the desert. Then Trump returned to the subject last Friday.

"Human traffickers – the victims are women and children," he said. "Maybe to a lesser extent, believe 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."

That would be heartbreaking if it weren't, in the words of the National Immigrant Justice Centre's Ashley Huebner, "completely divorced from reality". "That’s not a fact pattern that we see," she told the Washington Post.

So where's Trump pulled this vision of a Mexican border dystopia - equal parts Mad Max, Taken and Steven Seagal offcuts - from? As MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and half of the internet has pointed out, it sounds a lot like Trump watched Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado - in which cartels with mad jet-propelled cars, the prayer mats, the duct taped women all turn up - over the Christmas break.

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Maybe Trump did some sloppy mental filing, and slipped Sicario 2 in the bit of his brain where he usually keeps his intelligence briefings. Maybe his next Chief of Staff will be Benicio Del Toro. Maybe he's very clearly lying. Maybe he just doesn't know the difference anymore.

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