On Tuesday, President Donald Trump was supposed to finally make an announcement regarding his long awaited decision on the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA). It’s a touchy issue for most because it deals with the children of illegal immigrants, the job market, the economy, and questionable legality. But in an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, Princeton University Professor Eddie Glaude Jr. claimed the real reason DACA had its opponents was that of race.
In a segment about the future of DACA, MTP Moderator Chuck Todd wondered if Trump would announce that he planned to rescind the executive order signed by President Obama and tell Congress it was up to them to make it law.
Glaude didn’t buy into Todd’s idea, suggesting it was too thoughtful of a political strategy for the President to utilize. According to the professor, Trump was only playing to his base who only cared about DACA because they were white. “We can think about the policy issues but there is this kind of cultural undertow,” he asserted.
“This is really red meat to his base that it’s really speaking to a kind of deep seated cultural anxiety about the changing nature of the country,” he claimed. “That this immigration issue is not about securing the border and it's not about jobs, it’s not about fixing a bad immigration policy.”
He concluded his thought by seemingly trying to tie the idea of racism to the recent flooding in Texas. “It's really about what Houston looks like. It's a majority, minority nation,” he argued. Houston is a city where whites make up less than 50 percent of the population, hence his use of it as an example.
Todd then turned to Matthew Continetti, Editor-in-Chief for The Washington Free Beacon, to describe where the Republican Party sat on the issue. “Well, complicating the issue is that the Republican Party itself is divided,” he explained while noting there was a wing of the party that wanted to keep it.
Continetti made the far more reasonable argument, noting there were legal and economic reasons for the opposition to DACA:
There are two other wings. One is the Tea Party conservatives who oppose DACA for separation of power reasons. And then, of course, you have the working class populists who are for immigration restrictionism, in fact, want to reduce the number of legal immigrants admitted.
“That's two wings of the party who are aligned with Trump on the DACA issue versus the pro-business moderate wing,” Continetti added before making a prediction. “I think we might see the end of DACA in the coming months.”
For Glaude, most issues breakdown to race. In the wake of the violent ambush on Dallas police as they protected a Black Lives Matter protest last summer, he lectured MSNBC viewers about what he called the “value gap.” He claimed that, in America, White lives had more value than black ones.
Transcript below:
NBC
Meet the Press
September 3, 2017
11:23:28 AM Eastern(…)
EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Part of what I'm interested is in something Kristin said. This is about his base. And I’ve been talking about, you know, we can think about the policy issues but there is this kind of cultural undertow. This is really red meat to his base that it’s really speaking to a kind of deep seated cultural anxiety about the changing nature of the country. That this immigration issue is not about securing the border and it's not about jobs, it’s not about fixing a bad immigration policy. It's really about what Houston looks like. It's a majority, minority nation.
CHUCK TODD: Where are we, Matthew, in the party?
MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Well, complicating the issue is that the Republican Party itself is divided. All of the Republicans you quoted, Chuck, come from the sort-of pro-business moderate wing.
TODD: Chamber [of Commerce] wing, yeah.
CONTINETTI: There are two other wings. One is the Tea Party conservatives who oppose DACA for separation of power reasons. And then, of course, you have the working class populists who are for immigration restrictionism, in fact, want to reduce the number of legal immigrants admitted. That's two wings of the party who are aligned with Trump on the DACA issue versus the pro-business moderate wing. I think we might see the end of DACA in the coming months.
TODD: Very interesting.
