I wonder whether Team Trump considers it a bad sign that Sarah Sanders goes on Fox News--Fox!--and, after being politely called a liar by the interviewer, starts raving about how the bad guys are coming, the bad guys are coming, by air, by land, by water, an invasion, coming at us from every direction, and she repeated: by air, by land, by water! Paul Revere was comparatively reposed regarding the British. It's so bad the president will address the nation tonight in a prime time televised speech from the Oval Office. Kennedy did that to reveal that the Soviets were installing missiles in Cuba, Nixon did it to resign, and now the wicked brown people are coming by every conceivable means of conveyance.
There is no crisis at the southern border, unless you count kids being taken from their parents, and that isn't really a crisis, either, because, as the president's former chief of staff explained, "The children will be taken care of, put into foster care, whatever." So no crisis. Here are some facts regarding illegal immigration from Pew Research. I'd highlight the one about the percentage--66%--of unauthorized immigrants who have been here for more than ten years. That's mainly because they did not enter our country illegally--rather, they entered legally and have now overstayed. It's frequently pointed out that illegal immigrants are less apt than the general population to commit crimes. This seems a sensitive topic with the MAGA crowd, probably because it suggests that the supposedly depraved immigrants are better than us natives, though of course the real reason must be that they are more scared and therefore prudent. The dispute between Sarah Sanders and Fox interviewer Chris Wallace related to the number of "known or suspected terrorists" detained at the southern border by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) last year. She said it was nearly 4,000. Wallace said, no, according to CBP they were all detained at airports. This is when she started ranting like Paul Revere on Ritalin. As is so often the case, the truth turns out to be between the extremes: apparently, CBP detained, in the first half of 2018, six (6) migrants at the southern border whose names appeared on a terrorist watch list. (Forty-one were detained at the Canadian border.) The other 3,900-some were at airports. This reminds me of the time the basketball player Hot Rod Hundley, asked to name his biggest thrill in the game, replied it would have to be the night he and Elgin Baylor combined to score 81 points in a Lakers win. The difference between Hundley and Sanders is that, on further questioning, Hundley freely admitted that Baylor scored 79 of them.
A few years ago, after immigration reform had fallen apart in the Congress, President Obama issued some executive orders relating to immigration that also caused Republicans to lose their shit (as hip younger people say). A constitutional crisis! An overreach of executive authority! Obama asked the major networks for TV time for an address in which he'd talk like calm dad, and was declined on the ground that his purpose was "overtly political." But I guess they're cool with Trump tonight? Maybe they make a distinction between being "overtly political" (not allowed) and "lying your ass off" (which is okay). As John Kelly would say, whatever.
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