Media Boils Over Against Trump’s Immigration Stand

Over Labor Day weekend, two of Donald Trump’s most important surrogates, VP nominee Mike Pence and Dr. Ben Carson, both faced a grilling from the national media about Trump’s immigration stance.

On NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd wondered if Donald Trump would really deport every single illegal alien.

Why can’t you definitively say what’s going to happen to these folks? Because he used to definitively say it. He said there would be– everybody has to leave. Even if– quickly. Everybody has to leave. And now there’s some muddiness to this. I don’t know how– it is just unclear to me. Can you clear this up? 

For his part, Governor Pence chose not to directly respond, instead arguing that Trump has brought national attention to an issue of vital importance. Pence also derided the media’s focus on the plight of illegal immigrants and their decision to ignore the over 300 million law abiding American citizens that Donald Trump wants to help.

The simple truth is that what the American people long to see is leadership at the national level that doesn’t myopically focus on the group that you’re focused on and I know the media loves to focus on…

I was campaigning in Idaho. And a Mexican-American who came to this country legally with his family came up to me wearing a Trump-Pence shirt, shook my hand and said,

“Tell Donald Trump we support him 100%.”

I mean people who have come to this country legally, who stood in line, who played by the rules, in the Latino and the Hispanic community, just like every other American, long to have a president that says,

“We are a nation of laws, and that we’re going to uphold and enforce those laws.”

But what I thought was most important about Donald Trump’s speech on Wednesday night in Arizona was different, frankly Chuck, with all due respect… to the media’s focus on the 11 million or whatever that number is. He was focused on the more than 300 million people who are citizens of this country and are here legally in this country, and driving policies in immigration that will work for them, work for the future of our nation.

Then on Fox News SUNDAY Dr. Ben Carson had a seemingly more difficult time not getting agitated at being forced to defend Mr. Trump. Carson reminded host Chris Wallace and his viewers that while the Democrats were busy calling Mr. Trump hateful, the truth was that his position on illegal immigration was almost exactly the same as President Bill Clinton’s was in the mid-1990’s.

“When he [President Bill Clinton] says it ‘Wow. Great standing ovation. This is a great President!’ When Trump says it, it’s Hate Speech. What hypocrisy. What incredible hypocrisy!”

(Beginning about 5 minutes into the video.)

Here’s Clinton in 1995’s State of the Union commenting on illegal immigration:

We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.

It appears as though Mr. Trump’s immigration policies will be the focal point of the campaign from a Democrat perspective, which correspondingly indicates that we can be sure the media will have many more questions on this subject over the coming days and weeks.