Fox News dishonestly presented Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, as a credible expert to comment on the Hong Kong protests and then allowed him to baselessly fear monger that the U.S. will soon be swamped with Chinese immigrants sneaking into the country via Mexico.
Patrick was today’s #OneLuckyGuy on the Outnumbered show. Cohost Harris Faulkner introduced him, then said, “I want to just lean on your legal expertise and leadership” as to how the United States “should get involved, what that would look like” with regard to the Hong Kong protests.
FACT CHECK: Patrick has no discernible legal expertise. According to the Texas Observer, he graduated from University of Maryland Baltimore County. His official biography includes no degrees at all. The Austin American-Statesman sums up Patrick’s resumé this way:
Dan Patrick has been a salesman of Paper Mate products and class rings, a local TV sportscaster and weatherman, a restaurant and nightclub owner, a conservative radio personality, an author, a filmmaker and a politician. He has attended Lutheran, Catholic and Baptist churches. He has gone by Dannie Scott Goeb, Danny Scott and Dan Patrick.
…
By Patrick’s own telling, his years of instability and self-reinvention came to a sudden halt in March 1994, when he was in Las Vegas for a broadcast industry convention. Five years earlier, he had taken over a tiny suburban Houston radio station with a weak signal. Through hard work, good luck and a knack for tapping into his audience’s political id, he’d built it into a major player on Houston’s AM dial. Now Clear Channel wanted to buy it in a deal that would net Patrick and his partners almost $27 million.
Along with an utter lack of legal expertise is any in foreign policy, Asia, international affairs – basically anything related to the situation in Hong Kong.
But, not surprisingly, that did not stop Patrick from playing an expert on Fox News TV:
PATRICK: A couple of things come to mind. I’ve been to both Hong Kong and mainland China. It’s been several years ago. And you’re in one country where you really feel free when you’re in – or city – Hong Kong. And then you go to the mainland and you realize it’s a totally different world. And what we are seeing is a clash of people who love freedom and liberty, we ought to remember this as we come up on our upcoming elections, because a lot of our current election talk is about liberty and the freedom that people have. And no one should be surprised with what’s happening because this was inevitable. There was gonna be a point where freedom came up against communism. That’s where we are.
But let’s say Patrick’s political analysis is astute, despite it basis solely on a long-ago visit to the region and his beliefs about “freedom and liberty.”
What came next was verifiable BS:
PATRICK: When you go down to our border, we have had huge signs, huge signs in Chinese on our border. So when people come across the border illegally, there are signs in Spanish and Chinese. That’s how many people we’ve had come in from China. And we believe most of these are either the government is sending, they’re all young people, well-educated for the most part. How did they get from China to Mexico and to Texas? Or they are coming from families who are trying to get their kids to America. I think we’re gonna see bigger numbers of these families trying to get their young college students to America.
FACT CHECK: It is true that there are signs in Chinese at the border. But despite Patrick’s insinuation - which conveniently avoided citing statistics - there is no indication that Chinese immigration is anything close to Hispanic immigration.
In FY2018, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol reported 991 apprehensions from the Peoples Republic of China at the southern border. By contrast, there were 31,369 from El Salvador, 115,722 from Guatemala, 76,513 from Honduras, 152,257 from Mexico and 8,997 from India. Hong Kong is not on the list.
As Media Matters has noted, Patrick has a history of white-nationalist “invasion” rhetoric that closely aligns with Alex Jones and the El Paso shooter’s manifesto.
Not one of the four cohosts challenged Patrick’s evidence-free fear mongering. Nobody even questioned why protesters in Hong Kong would provoke Chinese nationals to emigrate to the U.S. or whether he thinks Hong Konger immigrants are indistinguishable from the Chinese. Instead, cohost Melissa Francis said, “Hmm,” as if she were learning something interesting as he spoke. Then she changed the subject to ask the obviously unknowledgeable guest whether China will release its grip on Hong Kong.
Spoiler alert: No, Patrick thinks the best the protesters can hope for is not being “dragged off” to jail in China and “never seeing the light of day again.”
Watch Patrick exploit the situation in Hong Kong for the sake of promoting more white nationalism below, from the August 13, 2019 Outnumbered.
(H/T Richard W.)
(Patrick image via screen grab)
Patrick may be half right. He quickly mentions Chinese college students. Obviously, it’s ludicrous to think they’ll flood the southern border. But a huge illegal immigration trend Fox News always ignores (because Trump ignores it) is students (and others) overstaying visas. Asians, particularly from India and China, are a big part of this.
Oh, and Patrick completely botches the ‘best Hong Kong can expect’ question. Hong Kong’s (via Great Britain) agreement with China calls for an independent Hong Kong through 2047, I believe. China honoring that is what the students are protesting for and clearly the best they can hope for – a realistic hope, IMHO.
Finally, Outnumbered brings up Trump’s postponement of Chinese tariffs. Not only do they fail to point out Donald ‘The Art of the Deal’ Trump’s bluff failed again but they refuse to point out Der Furor missed this opportunity stand up for human rights – once again – caved for fun and profits to Chinese oppression and aggression.