In some candid statements during an appearance on ABC’s This Week, where she claimed to be speaking for average Americans, Washington Post national correspondent Mary Jordan suggested that not only did they want the government shutdown to end, they wanted to ditch the border wall idea and just let the migrants cross into America.
“Do you think the President understands the impact of this partial government shutdown? I mean, we’re hearing from people it really does affect,” fill-in host and chief foreign affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz exclaimed, teeing Jordan up.
Jordan thought, “no”, President Trump didn’t understand how the shutdown was Affecting people. “What people are saying are ‘stop it, just stop the political game’. This is all about politics. It's really not about the wall,” she claimed with no evidence.
She suggested it was “silly to blame the Democrats about this” and argued it was just a massive distraction campaign to draw attention away from the Russia investigation and other bad news items like the economy:
So, it's really not about the wall. And it's silly to blame the Democrats about this. It's really a deflection. A lot of bad news for Donald Trump lately. The economy is erratic. The Mueller probe is coming down. It's not going to be good news for him. And again, he wants the boogie man. He wants the Democrats.
Sorry to break it to you Jordan, but just because the stock market has been experiencing some corrections doesn’t mean the economy is “erratic”. For a while now, folks in the liberal media have been talking about (and essentially praying) for a recession because they argued it’s the only way for Trump to lose in 2020. Claiming the economy was “erratic” was arguably an extension of that twisted hope.
It’s hard to determine where Jordan’s comments went from her pretending to speak for other people to her just spouting off she own liberal beliefs, but she insisted people wanted the migrants to just come across the border:
Regular people are like, “come on, stop it. Do the hard thing. Fix immigration.” For one thing, we want a lot of these people to come across the border. We need them in the nursing homes. We need these jobs. Do the hard thing. Figure out how to get visas for people who can come over and work. Toughen the border where we need it and stop talking about $5 billion on a concrete wall that makes no sense.
While Jordan may whine that the wall “makes no sense” and “kind of like investing in landline technology in the era of cellphones”, Raddatz brought on Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan earlier in the program and he made the case for it.
According to McAleenan, CBP was not asking for just a “dumb barrier”. “We're talking about the sensors, cameras, lighting, access roads for our agents, a system that helps up secure the area of the border. That’s what we were asking Congress,” he explained.
Jordan and Raddatz made the strawman arguments that offenders would just dig under a wall or fly a drone over it (respectively). McAleenan noted that the wall they were asking for would “push the traffic into the areas we can control more effectively. It’s a multi-faceted approach. We need counter-drone technology too. We appreciate Congress giving [Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen] the authority to start exploring that. We need to attack all of the different vectors that could threaten us.”
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
ABC’s This Week
December 30, 2018
9:09:27 a.m. Eastern(…)
MARTHA RADDATZ: I've been along that border and driven most of that border. There's areas where the wall is clearly ineffective. People are climbing over that wall. How much of that border do you think the wall that exists or the fencing that exists is ineffective?
COMMISSIONER KEVIN MCALEENAN (Customs and Border Protection): So, our wall system priorities are derived from our agents in the field. They offer the capabilities they need to achieve control of their sector, their area of responsibility. We've asked for about 1,000 miles of wall and our top 17 priorities on the primary line. These are areas where we have a dense metropolitan area on both sides of the border where people can disappear quickly into a neighborhood on the U.S. side if we can’t slow them down. And what we’re talking about is not just a dumb barrier. We're talking about the sensors, cameras, lighting, access roads for our agents, a system that helps up secure the area of the border. That’s what we were asking Congress.
RADDATZ: If you got -- if the administration got $5 billion for a wall, would you want part of that money to be spent for all these technologies that you’re talking about?
MCALEENAN: Absolutely. That's included in the ask of Congress. It's about 215 miles of wall system that has all of those capabilities included in it.
RADDATZ: You've said you need this border security investment. There's a lot of Congressmen I talked to down here who say, “look, you get the wall up there and a drone will just fly over. That's how they're delivering drugs and other illegal substances”.
MCALEENAN: Well, no one is asking for a single focus on our border security investments. We’ve asked for--
RADDATZ: But when you look at a wall, can't that just be overtaken by a drone or some other method of getting through?
MCALEENAN: When you're talking about 60,000 people flowing across the border and you’re talking about drug smuggling increasing between ports of entry – hard narcotics, synthetic opioids, methamphetamines come 25 percent increase last year, we’ve seen an increase again in the first three months of this year. We need a barrier to help us stop that, to push the traffic into the areas we can control more effectively. It’s a multi-faceted approach. We need counter-drone technology too. We appreciate Congress giving the Secretary the authority to start exploring that. We need to attack all of the different vectors that could threaten us.
(…)
9:44:30 a.m. Eastern
RADDATZ: Do you think the President understands the impact of this partial government shutdown? I mean, we’re hearing from people it really does affect!
MARY JORDAN: No. What people are saying are “stop it, just stop the political game”. This is all about politics. It's really not about the wall. I spent five years writing about Mexico. I've been all along the border. Talking about a $5 billion wall and shutting down the government because you want it is kind of like investing in landline technology in the era of cellphones. Along that border people can just dig tunnels. There’s tunnels all over the border.
So, it's really not about the wall. And it's silly to blame the Democrats about this. It's really a deflection. A lot of bad news for Donald Trump lately. The economy is erratic. The Mueller probe is coming down. It's not going to be good news for him. And again, he wants the boogie man. He wants the Democrats. Regular people are like, “come on, stop it. Do the hard thing. Fix immigration.” For one thing, we want a lot of these people to come across the border. We need them in the nursing homes. We need these jobs. Do the hard thing. Figure out how to get visas for people who can come over and work. Toughen the border where we need it and stop talking about $5 billion on a concrete wall that makes no sense.
(…)
