Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, went a little crazy Tuesday at the White House. He showed off a photo display of steel-barrier construction and launched into a frenzied attempt to describe how President Donald Trump is already making good on his promise to build a border wall.

His flailing presentation was a clear effort to drown out the sounds of silence from Capitol Hill, where Republicans and Democrats have agreed to zero dollars for Trump's border wall in the current funding deal. Rather than admit defeat, the administration is doubling down on deceit.

"The president delivered on his promises and got his priorities funded, and that's what the Democrats don't want you to know. They want you to think they won, but they don't want you to know the American people won here because the president simply out-negotiated them," Mulvaney said. Voice rising, he jabbed his index finger at a succession of photos.

"And we're going to build this. There are several hundreds of millions of dollars for us to replace cyclone fencing with 20-foot high steel wall. ... We are building this now. There is money in this deal to build several hundreds of millions of dollars of this to replace this. That's what we got in this deal and that's what the Democrats don't want you to know. This stuff is going up now. Why? Because the president wants to make the country more safe," he added.

Asked where the photos were taken, Mulvaney was clueless. CNN reporter Gary Tuchman checked it out and identified the exact location: Sunland Park, N.M., near the border cities of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Mulvaney's remarks were more than disingenuous. He pointed to the chain-link cyclone fence and said, "This doesn't stop drugs and doesn't stop criminals from crossing the border. In fact, it doesn't stop hardly anything from crossing the border."

It wasn't meant to. The cyclone fence was erected for workplace security by a construction company hired under the Obama administration to perform repair and upgrade work on a segment of existing fencing. Obama authorized the work under the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which then-President George W. Bush signed into law to provide funding for fence upgrades, primarily near heavily populated areas.

The photos were taken from the Mexican side of the border, CNN reported, and the construction work took place long ago with no Trump administration input. Trump does have access to funds limited to the same repair and upgrade work done previously.

Mulvaney's antics do nothing to advance the administration's agenda. If the president wants full funding for a border wall, he must lay out a clear case and present a winning argument, not use smoke-and-mirror gimmicks to suggest progress where none exists.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH