Stephen Miller, White House senior policy advisor and anti-immigrant fanatic, was able to provide only rambling, unconvincing replies to Chris Wallace’s tough questions about Donald Trump’s so-called national emergency. The Trump Twitterverse was massively triggered.
Wallace began by quoting Trump saying, when he made his declaration, “I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn't need to do this but I'd rather do it much faster.”
“How does that justify a national emergency?” Wallace asked in his opening question.
Miller’s answer was complete BS: “What the president was saying is that like past presidents, he could choose to ignore this crisis, choose to ignore this emergency as others have. But that's not what he's going to do.”
Wallace did not challenge that ridiculousness. Instead, he moved on, still questioning the national emergency:
WALLACE: The government's own numbers show, for all the president is talking about drugs streaming over the border, 80 to 90 percent of the cocaine, heroin and fentanyl seized at the border is seized at ports of entry, not along unfenced areas.
And in 2017, twice as many of the new people in the country illegally were from visa overstays, as were from crossing the border. Again, where's the emergency -- the national emergency to build a wall?
When Miller finally got around to answering why a wall is needed to prevent drug smuggling, his “explanation” amounted to, “Well, immigrants could be bringing in drugs over the unfenced areas but we don’t really know.”
MILLER: Chris, the problem with the statement that you're apprehending 80 to 90 percent of the drugs at the ports of entry, that's like saying, you apprehend this contraband at TSA checkpoints at airports. You apprehend the contraband there because that's where you have the people. That's where you have the screeners.
I assure you, if we had people at that same density and screeners at that same density across every single inch and mile of the southern border, you'd have more drug interdicted in those areas. You don't know what you don't know and you don't catch what you don't catch.
Later, after Miller agreed he’s a “constitutional conservative” who believes the “Constitution should be interpreted as written,” Wallace pressed Miller on the constitutional questions surrounding the “national emergency.”
WALLACE: OK, here's Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7, of the Constitution as written. "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law."
[…]
Can you point to a single incident, even one, where the president asked Congress for money, Congress refused to give him that money, and the president then invoked national emergency powers to get the money?
MILLER: First of all --
WALLACE: Can you find one case?
MILLER: What you're missing, Chris, is that the national emergencies don't have all the same authorities and the same justification.
WALLACE: I assume that, but there have been 59. Can you find one case like that?
MILLER: This authority specifically refers to using military construction funds. Other emergencies, for example, were to --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: If you want to talk about military constructions, do you know how many times military construction has been invoked as a national emergency? That would be only be twice.
MILLER: Right.
WALLACE: Twice. Once by George H. W. Bush during the middle of the Gulf War and the second time by George W. Bush right after 9/11.
(CROSSTALK)
MILLER: Chris, can you name -- can you name one foreign threat in the world today, outside this country's borders that currently kills more Americans than the threats crossing our southern border?
WALLACE: You know the joy of this is I get to ask you questions and you don’t get to ask them.
In any normal world, Miller would be out the door of the White House for such ineptitude. But in Trump World, Wallace was in the wrong for asking tough questions. He was accused by the conservative snowflakes of “getting news from liberal tp” and even attacked as an “arrogant jew.”
Watch the interview that triggered Fox News viewers below, from the February 17, 2019 Fox News Sunday.
(Transcript via Fox News, with minor copy edits)