As front-runner Donald Trump has fought off his challengers for the Republican nomination, and other races play out down the ballot, the airwaves have been filled with political ads. And those ads have been filled with the word “border.” According to a report from the ad-tracking firm Ad Impact, the word has appeared 1,319 times in political ads since the beginning of the year. That’s more than any other word, even “standard disclaimer words” like “approve” and “message.”

As Trump mows through his Republican challengers, he’s already looking ahead to the general election. President Joe Biden makes a good target for Trump’s bizarre, cruel, and frankly often funny brand of insult comedy. During one recent riff on Biden’s cognitive decline, Trump did an impression of Biden trying to fend off a question about immigration at a press conference. Trump’s version of Biden said, while the crowd tittered, that “the border” was “very normal.” To the audience at a Trump rally, it went without saying that the situation at the border is not only not normal, but in a severe crisis.

The Right’s assessment isn’t based on nothing. It’s true, for example, that the system for processing asylum seekers has been severely strained. But as Trump’s GOP works itself into a frenzy on the topic, they’re blowing up this germ of truth into an apocalyptic doomsday narrative. Ads for Ron DeSantis, who was once hailed even by some liberals as a relatively sane alternative to Trump, use the word “invasion” to describe peaceful people crossing the border to escape terrible conditions or look for work. Outside the presidential race, Texas governor Greg Abbott complained that the Biden administration wouldn’t let his state shoot immigrants on sight.