Trump seems to think all DACA recipients, aka “Dreamers,” are Hispanic and that he’ll be doing them a huge favor by not deporting them. He also seems to think we'll forget that he is the one who caused the DACA problem in the first place.
During his nearly 24-minute ego-stroking on Fox News Saturday night, Trump dropped his DACA-for-the-Hispanics nugget in the middle of a long boast to host Jeanine Pirro about his accomplishments, his claim to want the country to unite and, at the same time, attacking Democrats. It started at about 9:44.
TRUMP: We have to come together as a nation.
[…]
It’s been an incredible period and I was saying before - and somebody was very readily agreeing with me – I don’t think any administration has done as much as we’ve done in the first year – I don’t think it’s even close – between the taxes, the regulations, Justice Gorsuch, many district judges, many court of appeals judges and many more to go. We have great judges – you know, literally just waiting. We have a tremendous problem with Senator Schumer where he’s not approving people that are working in the administration. It’s unprecedent[ed]. We have hundreds of people that have taken so long to get approved and we have people still waiting to get approved in the trade groups, in, you know, very important groups, Jeanine. The Democrats – I mean, the one thing they’re very incredible at is obstruction. The one thing they’re incredible at – you know, they use it, they resist. And really, it’s just bad for the country.
PIRRO: It’s very bad.
TRUMP: So hopefully that can get done and hopefully we can get DACA done. I’d like to do that for the Hispanics out there. You know, I did very well with the Hispanics. Much better than anyone would have thought. I’m the one that’s pushing DACA and the Democrats are nowhere to be found.
While, it’s true that most DACA recipients are Hispanic, a significant chunk are not. According to Pew Research Center, four of the top 15 countries of origin of are South Korea, Philippines, India and Jamaica.
Furthermore, Trump’s statement sounds like he thinks he’s being generous to “the Hispanics,” as opposed to doing something that’s common sense and basically decent for young people who came here as children and have lived here almost their entire lives. And let's not forget, even if Trump would have liked to, that he is the one who upended DACA and threw it into turmoil last fall.
Trump's remark is also reminiscent of his 2011 claim to having a “great relationship with the blacks.”
Of course, host and long-time Trump chum Pirro said nothing to question Trump's speciousness.
Watch it below, from the February 24, 2018 Justice with Judge Jeanine.
1. The first year of the Pence White House was an embarrassing disaster, where very little was accomplished amid all the controversies and the inability of Pence to get much of anything done. The only real movement that happened was a pointed erasure of every single thing the prior Administration had accomplished, in terms of getting rid of programs started or supported by President Obama, and in terms of deliberately starving multiple federal departments of resources and personnel. The only notable events that happened in the legislature were the ramming-through of Neil Gorsuch by Mitch McConnell, who celebrated his bullying by engaging in high-fives on the Senate Floor after disgracing himself in his conduct for over 14 months, and the passing of the extremely regressive Tax Transfer at the end of the year, something that will result in tens of millions of middle class Americans seeing much higher taxes while wealthy individuals and corporations get a huge gift. The only visible “accomplishments” we’ve been seeing have been disgraces like the removal and deletion of major environmental research from the EPA website (something that research groups thankfully anticipated by copying and preserving all those documents before Pence could have them deleted) and the deliberate sabotage of the Affordable Care Act.
2. The issue with Senate confirmations isn’t just that the Democratic members of that body are asking for proper evaluation of many thoroughly unqualified appointees. It’s that the Pence White House hasn’t made very many appointments. They’re deliberately understaffing most of their departments and refusing to appoint replacements. They’re also trying to make life miserable for the current employees, in the hope that those people will choose to retire or leave public service. We literally have dozens of embassies around the world that do not have an ambassador or a complete senior staff. And we have major positions in Justice, State, the EPA, Education, etc, that are notably unfilled and have nobody even named for appointment. (The clear intent with Education and the EPA, among others, is to take the first steps towards simply closing the departments if the Pence White House is allowed to inflict a second term.)
3. The Republicans’ constant refrain about “obstruction” is entirely hypocritical, given that they spent the entire 8 years of President Obama’s terms engaged in deliberate and total obstruction themselves. We should remember that the Right Wing engaged in this despicable behavior at a time when the nation was in a major recession, with their stated intent being their wish to foil any attempt by the Democratic Party to get the country back on its feet, in the hope that they could score political points and get their majorities back. The Democrats’ current attempts to rein in the damage being inflicted by Mike Pence and his appointees is both appropriate and necessary, given that no positive positions have been taken by the Pence White House – only attacks on the prior Administration. We should also note that the current state of the Democrats trying to resist the ramming-through of disastrous appointments and policies is taking place during a moment of economic prosperity shepherded in by President Obama and the Democratic Party in spite of the Right Wing’s constant hateful opposition. So the Democrats are resisting moves that will actually hurt a growing economy. The Republicans’ vicious behavior in 2009 and onward was intended to keep a languishing economy down – both in their obstruction and in their constant talking-down of any progress that was made.
4. As for DACA, nothing is going to come from this Congress, and Mike Pence is fully aware of it. Trump’s comments about wanting to “get something done” or getting a bill done “out of love” has been revealed to just be puffery for public consumption. His true feelings about the situation have been revealed both by Rush Limbaugh and by Trump himself, when he mused about not wanting any more immigrants from the “xxxxhole” countries. His true feelings have been revealed by his threat to veto any DACA plan that does not include the hateful and xenophobic dismantling of the current immigration system. Now, we’ve had an interesting twist in the refusal of the Supreme Court to circumvent normal appellate procedure on DACA. Unless the Pence White House wants to violate a court order, DACA will actually continue for the next few months, while Pence appeals to the 9th Circuit and the 2nd Circuit to have the stays lifted on his attempt to destroy the program. It is entirely possible that these matters will drag on into the fall before those circuit courts hear the Pence appeals, meaning that DACA would continue on into next year before the Supreme Court would get the issue back, which in turn means that a new Congress with Democratic majorities could actually pass a fix. Except that we know that Mike Pence will have his spokesman veto that fix…