On Wednesday's Fox and Friends, FNC's Steve Doocy did something that one would not expect to see on the more liberal news networks as he devoted a segment to putting into perspective that much of the Trump administration's policies on dealing with illegal immigrants are very similar to what was done during the Obama administration, in spite of the dominant liberal media only just recently taking notice as if it were a totally new thing.
At 7:16 a.m. Eastern, Doocy introduced the segment: "There's been a lot of confusion about the Trump administration's immigration plans, but it's not that far from what the Obama administration has done. Watch this."
There were then soundbites of President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama discussing the issue of deterring illegal immigration. Obama was seen stating: "Our message absolutely is: Don't send your children unaccompanied on trains or through a bunch of smugglers."
The FNC host then brought aboard Gus Portela of the right-leaning Accuracy in Media to discuss media coverage of the Trump administration increasing prosecutions of those who cross the border illegally. After Portela noted that "Obama now holds the record for the most deportations ever for any President," the FNC host followed up by posing: "President Obama held women and children in detention centers -- is that fact or fiction?"
Portela recalled: "It was done as a form of deterrent to keep the rest of the families from coming across the border. And if they had already been deported once, you know, preventing them from coming back again across the border."
Doocy then asked if the "Obama administration housed unaccompanied children in tent cities."
After Portela answered in the affirmative, the two then elaborated:
DOOCY: In those centers where the children were detained, were they those same cage rooms that we've been seeing? Did they have the thermal blankets that we've seen the images from as well?
PORTELA: Yeah, some of those pictures came from some of those reports in 2014, you know. I'm not entirely sure they were kept in cages. Hopefully not, obviously, but, you know, they were definitely detained and interrogated obviously to figure out what was going on -- to see if they could gather any intelligence from the cartels across the border.
Doocy then followed up: "If the Trump administration is doing essentially the same thing the Obama administration did, back in the day, right, why the disparity in the coverage?"
The Accuracy in Media executive director recounted:
A lot of the coverage -- a lot of the tweets, the firestorm that came from some of the liberal media out there -- they ended up deleting their tweets because they ended up blaming President Trump for doing all of this and starting it when, in reality, these are many programs that were put in place way before the Trump administration.
