During Thursday night's edition of The Kelly File on the Fox News Channel soon after the president announced that he was taking executive action regarding illegal immigration, guest Geraldo Rivera praised Barack Obama for “doing finally the right thing” and blamed Republicans as the reason legislation on the issue has failed to pass Congress.
The senior correspondent for the network declared that “I don't know and I don't care” why Obama took the extreme action more than a month before the newly elected Congress will be sworn in and claimed that the GOP “had it coming” because they blame immigrants for everything, including “climate change if they believed in it.”
Kelly began the segment by playing a video clip of Charles Krauthammer -- another analyst for Fox News -- stating that if Obama “feels so strongly about this, and Scripture dictates this ought to be done, why did he do nothing about this in 2009 and 2010, when he had control of the White House, the House and the Senate, and he could actually have done this Constitutionally by passing legislation?”
When the host asked her guest to respond to that statement, he said: “It's not relevant to me. It really made me angry that he chose to go with ObamaCare rather than immigration reform even though he had told the Latino community and the Asian-American community that immigration reform was his priority.”
Rivera dismissed the fact that the president waited six years to address the issue and asserted:
What matters tonight is he's doing finally the right thing. He may be doing it for awful, base reasons, political reasons. I don't know and I don't care.
I care that he has finally done the right thing for otherwise law-abiding family immigrants who have been here five years or more who have, in every other way, followed the law.
“These are people that are the seeds of the Earth,” he noted. “These are people who make America strong, and I'm glad he's done it.”
Kelly then asked about “his 25 on-camera statements over the years that he doesn't have the authority. I mean, I watched them all, and he said 'No, I can't, I can't, I can't.'”
She continued by stating: “Those Univision and Telemundo anchors in particular really gave it to him and said: 'OK, we get it. Congress isn't doing anything. Why can't you at least write an executive action that expands what you did for the Dreamers, for the kids, to allow their parents to stay?'”
“Again, I don't care,” Rivera replied. “What about [Florida GOP senator] Marco Rubio, who was going to be a champion of immigration reform and then chickened out in the face of intransigent Tea Party opposition? [Arizona Republican senator] John McCain was a champion of immigration reform. Where has he been?”
After Kelly stated that the GOP's lack of action is not illegal, Rivera replied: “I care about the immigrants, I don't care about the politics.”
“But you're a lawyer,” the host replied. “You care about the law.”
“This is legal,” he asserted, “even though it may be hypocritical” because “the president has absolute discretion to do what he's just done.”
Rivera continued: “This is a reaction to the fact that the House of Representatives,” especially “leader John Boehner, is powerless. His body has been totally taken over by Steve King of Iowa, by Mo Brooks of Alabama, by the immigration radicals.”
Kelly noted that this action “isn't a position about illegal immigration, it's just about executive power, which you know is potentially dangerous if expanded too large. And the problem for Obama is the House gets a vote, even if you don't like the fact that they're not into your bill.”
“The House had no intention of voting,” Rivera stated. “The Republicans that effectively lead the House had no intension whatsoever of ever passing a bill.”
As a result, “they had it coming. They did. They waited and waited. They have been blaming these people for everything falsely for ISIS [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria] and Ebola. They would blame the immigrants for climate change if they believed in it. They've made them scapegoats.”
Geraldo continued:
I understand that most of our viewers disagree with me on this, but what matters to me is that these are the very people that make this nation what it is, a nation that is youthful and vigorous and vibrant and attracts people from all over the world.
We take these diverse streams, and we say: “Come to this mighty river that's America.” That's the difference between us and Russia. We are ascendant, and they are descendant.
Kelly concluded the discussion by stating that “74 percent of the American people agree that there should be a path to citizenship as long as they pay fines, back taxes, pass a security check. But the majority still want it to be done lawfully.”
