On his Sunday show, CNN host Fareed Zakaria seemed to worry that President Donald Trump will benefit politically in the long run from taking tough positions on border security in spite of recent public opinion apparently opposing the decision to prosecute all illegal border crossings when doing so sometimes requires separating children from parents.
The CNN show also used the infamous image of the immigrant child who was originally presented by the media as having been separated from her mother, but turned out was not actually separated.
After a photograph of the child was shown in the opening tease of Fareed Zakaria GPS, the CNN host opened the show with his regular commentary in which he immediately suggested Democrats are "walking into a trap" on immigration. Zakaria:
Democrats are exultant that Donald Trump had to reverse his policy of separating immigrant families at the border -- and there is good reason to celebrate. The policy was meanspirited and unnecessary. But I do wonder whether Trump's retreat will prove to be as damaging to the President as liberals think.
The President's cruelty made it easy to oppose his policy, but in their delight at the Trump administration's latest missteps, Democrats may be walking into a trap.
A second version of the child with her mother was also shown briefly as the CNN host began his commentary, as if it were an example of immigrant children being separated from their parents.
He soon notably showed a clip of Hillary Clinton from 2014 when the then-Secretary of State spoke of deterring illegal immigrant children from showing up at the border. Clinton:
We have to send a clear message: Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn't mean the child gets to stay, so we don't want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or that will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.
Zakaria ended up recalling the story of a man who indicated to a pollster that he would vote for President Ronald Reagan in 1984 because he feared that Democratic nominee Walter Mondale might be a communist. Referring to Reagan, the voter had commented that, "one thing I know, nobody's ever thought he was a communist," even if he was not sure whether Mondale was.
The CNN host then concluded: "Donald Trump might have lost this round, but no one will ever think he's soft on illegal immigration."
After the CNN host introduced the first segment by recalling that the leaders of a number of countries -- including Iran -- had criticized the treatment of children separated from their parents, it took until seven minutes into the show -- at 10:07 a.m. Eastern -- before Zakaria finally admitted that the immigrants in question were entering the country "illegally," tying in with the liberal news network's recent history of conflating legal asylum seekers with immigrants who cross the border illegally and claim asylum after they are apprehended.
