Friday morning’s network news programs featured the third set of newscasts kvetching and screeching about how the liberal elite’s beloved Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts was beset with a “humanitarian crisis” of just under 50 illegal immigrants, who were turned into “pawns” thanks to “an audacious stunt” from Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
Thankfully for them, the brown-skinned individuals were deported from the island by midday Friday, so they won’t have to worry about them anymore (and in turn only the ones whom they pay to clean their mansions and mow their lawns).
CBS Mornings led the way in showing their disgust with co-host, Democratic donor, and Obama family friend Gayle King fretted in the “Eye Opener” that “Republicans sen[t] migrants to blue states to make a point.”
King also reupped her detachment from real Americans by concurring with Late Show host Stephen Colbert’s quip that it was an error for DeSantis to send people “to one of the loveliest parts of New England just in time for” the leaves changing.
“Stephen Colbert, that is an excellent point and I know he's been to Martha's Vineyard, so he knows it's a really great place,” she gushed.
Co-host Nate Burleson concurred, saying “he’s not lying” while co-host Tony Dokoupil added that “it is a pretty island.”
Pivoting to their report from Martha’s Vineyard, King said they would “begin...with the growing fallout from what Democrats say is just a political stunt...using migrant lives, they say, as props.”
Correspondent Elaine Quijano swooned from the island that “the community here has rallied behind these migrants,” but didn’t acknowledge the contradiction between that statement and her next one that “local officials are coordinating with the state to find them other housing.”
Quijano painted a grim picture of 50 illegals in Massachusetts, which is something border towns face multiple times an hour (click “expand”):
In a whaling port-turned-popular vacation destination, St. Andrews Episcopal Church normally only needs to provide shelter for a few people at a time. But today, it's offering accommodations for about 50, a group of Venezuelan migrants including elderly and children as young as four. None of whom speak English, and some without relatives or resources in the U.S. Some documented their trip, taking pictures and videos with their cell phones. This mother was told she was heading to Washington. She says, “I want my son to be safe, go to school, and have the safety we didn't have in our home country.” The migrants flew in from Texas on two planes chartered by Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.
(....)
On Thursday, buses carrying about 100 asylum seekers and migrants from Texas arrived unannounced outside Vice President Kamala Harris's residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory. So far, Texas and Arizona have sent at least 295 buses with approximately 13,000 migrants to D.C., New York, and Chicago, drawing strong criticism from Democratic leaders and the Biden administration.
After Quijano closed with a warning that the Bay State’s U.S. Attorney could be look at charges, Burleson expressed his disgust with DeSantis (but not those encouraging open borders): “I've heard that life is a chess game, but people should not be used as pawns politically or not.”
And in the show’s “Eye Opener at 8,” King huffed: “Republicans continue to use migrants to score political points against Democrats as around 100 people are bussed to Vice President Harris’s home.”
ABC’s Good Morning America co-host George Stephanopoulos conceded that DeSantis and Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) put the “White House on defense” as Biden “accus[ed] them of using humans as props for sending immigrants...to liberal strongholds[.]”
Senior White House correspondent Mary Bruce snarked that the governors engaged in “an audacious stunt” by “using thousands of migrants searching for a better life to make a political point about immigration.”
“It’s an attempt to up the pressure on Democrats and the White House and highlighting what is a serious issue and this morning, the President is now responding, defending his policies and calling this Republican tactic reckless and un-American,” she boasted.
Bruce admitted that the buses and flights were coming “from strained border communities to liberal strongholds, an effort to spotlight immigration” and “giv[e] the rest of the country a much needed dose of reality.”
Giving only one soundbite to DeSantis, Bruce closed by lamenting Biden thinks “Republicans have shown no interest in actually solving the immigration problem.”
NBC’s Today was incredulous from the start. In a tease, co-host Savannah Guthrie called 50 illegal immigrants a “humanitarian crisis” that required “emergency shelters.”
Co-host Hoda Kotb breathlessly added in the lead-in to correspondent Emilie Ikeda’s report that it was “the latest flashpoint in the nation's border battle.”
Ikeda also made their arrival seem like a DEFCON-1 scenario for an island where homes sell for tens of millions of dollars as, in spite of that alleged hardship, the town “sprung into action and transformed” one “block into a place of refuge and unity, a sharp contrast to Capitol Hill where the debate over the number of migrant crossings reaches new levels.”
She went onto say that they were all “caught in a fierce political fight over immigration that’s being escalated” (click “expand”):
IKEDA: This morning, on the wealthy summer getaway Martha's Vineyard, dozens of migrants from Venezuela are caught in a fierce political fight over immigration that’s being escalated by several Republican governors. Officials say two charter flights carrying 48 migrants, including young children, landed here Wednesday, without warning. The planes were arranged by Florida's Republican Governor, Ron DeSantis, protesting President Biden's border security policies.
DESANTIS: We are not a sanctuary state. And it's better to be able to go to a sanctuary jurisdiction and, yes, we will help facilitate that transport for you.
IKEDA: President Biden condemning the move.
BIDEN: What they're doing is simply wrong. It's un-American, it's reckless.
(....)
IKEDA: Democrats say these migrants and others like them have become political pawns, pointing to DeSantis’s possible presidential bid in 2024.
Like Bruce, Ikeda used a portion to briefly give ground, noting “the record-breaking influx at the southern border is straining the system and they want to push states with liberal immigration policies to shoulder the burden” and that Vice President Harris’s claim that “[t]he border is secure” clashes with reality.
Before tossing back to Kotb, Ikeda even casually admitted the Biden administration might launch their own flights: “Some DHS officials are pushing President Biden to fly or bus migrants from the border to other northern cities to help alleviate overcrowding near those border states.”
Friday’s network hissy fits over the border crisis affecting their turf was made possible thanks to advertisers such as Citi (on NBC), Neutrogena (on CBS), Subaru (on ABC). Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant transcripts form September 16, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).
