On the Christmas Eve edition of Morning Joe, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough pushed the lame argument that, because a majority of illegal immigrants are estimated to be visa overstays, it is therefore not worth it to build a border wall to halt the substantial number who cross from Mexico illegally.
After citing a Wall Street Journal editorial page article against the border wall arguing that "it wouldn't stop illegal immigration since most illegals arrive by overstaying their legal visas," he then commented: "This has been the insanity of this whole 'build the wall' argument for three years now."
He then repeated the Wall Street Journal's point that most illegal immigrants overstayed a visa.
Even though immigrants who cross the border illegally are still a substantial number of people, plus there is reason to suspect illegal border crossers commit crimes at a higher rate because they avoid criminal background checks before coming in, MSNBC contributor Jon Meacham went along with Scarborough's premise against a wall and implicated race in the drive for building one.
The liberal historian complained that the promise by candidate Donald Trump "is the embodiment of the politics of fear over the politics of hope." He then portrayed people in rural areas as misinformed:
If he gives up the wall, he's basically admitting that the whole thing was a fraud. I think the whole thing was a fraud, but he's not going to admit that. And the people -- and you and I know them -- you and I are related to them. They tend to be more rural, more Southern, more Western places, but not all.
They believe that caravans are coming because they are told that. They believe that immigrants -- illegal immigrants are on crime sprees because that's what they've been told. And they have been told that this wall will fix America -- it will keep these people who don't look like us from taking over America -- from moving into jobs -- from changing the culture.
He soon fretted that Trump supporters may not come to the realization that the President's promises have been hollow as he soon added:
If you're a Trump supporter and you don't deal with the fact that your entire vote is basically built -- and your support is basically built on the idea that you're going to ineffectually and symbolically keep people out of a country that was entirely built on people coming in -- if you don't deal with that, we're not going to have this fever break. And this fever has got to break.
