We've been here before. Trump makes wild accusations completely based on - well, practically nothing - because he loves to rile up his base and impugn minorities. If he can throw in a side of misogyny and gaslighting, he's happy as a pig in shit. If he can force a woman to do it so he doesn't have to??? OMG, BONUS.

That's how we found ourselves today, with Sarah Huckabee Sanders defending his comments from his West Virginia speech, in which he claimed to be appalled that women are raped, and that it's happening at "levels that nobody's ever seen before." In his super-linear and coherent way, he connected it to immigration and babies born here.

When ABC's Jon Karl asked today about it, all Huckabee Sanders could do was say that we knew for a fact - A FACT, PEOPLE - that 80% of women and girls crossing the border are raped and/or sexually assaulted. Based on what? Well, apparently a Huffington Post article from 2014 with two faulty links, and which claims to have been updated in 2017, but shows no discernible evidence of such updates.

Sexual assault and rape are indeed heinous crimes, and people seeking refuge in our country are often fleeing it, only to be faced with it along the way and once they are here. That is gut-wrenching and soul-crushing. However - that is why we are supposed to LET THEM IN AND HELP THEM, PEOPLE. How does he get from expressing "sympathy" for them to saying we shouldn't let them in???

Huckabee Sanders was really struggling, there. As usual. Let's have a rough recap:

"It came out yesterday." NOPE. 2014.
"L.A. Times." NOPE. Huffington Post.
(Reporter asks if 80% of the women crossing the border are raped.) "He's saying drug smugglers, traffickers, coyotes, Mr. Potato Head is my favorite toy...NEXT SUBJECT PLEASE???"

Wha?????? What the everloving f*** is she talking about?

It's painful to watch. I don't know which is worse. That Trump labels Mexicans "rapists," that he - an admitted sexual assaulter - pretended to give a damn about rape victims, or that we have to watch this woman stand at the podium and attempt to convince the press corps that the reason Trump is against immigration is that women are raped. OR that this administration is so lacking in competence that this short of shitshow is our reality on the daily.

Transcript follows:

Reporter: If I could ask you to clarify something he said in his remarks in West Virginia. He said yesterday it came out where this journey coming up, women are raped at levels nobody has ever seen before. What was he talking about?

Sanders: It was not -- it came out yesterday. I believe the L.A. Times, I don't have it in here in front of me, that documented some of that. This is a well-documented fact, that a lot of the people, I believe, up to 80% in recent years, of women that are making that journey have been raped in that process. The president's saying that's simply unacceptable and something that should be looked at.

Reporter: 80% of the women coming across the border are raped?

Sanders: No, he's saying the drug smugglers, the traffickers, coyotes. This has happened in recent years and has been up to 80%.