On Tuesday night's edition of Alex Wagner Tonight on MSNBC, host Alex Wagner brought on White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for a wide-ranging interview on everything from the ongoing Biden border crisis to President Joe Biden's claim on 60 Minutes that the COVID-19 pandemic is over. Comments that sent his own public health advisors into a frenzied clean-up afterward. Yet Jean-Pierre's incoherence when answering questions no matter how simple isn't just displayed during press briefings when pressed by the White House press corps, she even struggles when given softballs by friendly press.
In light of the controversy of Governors Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Greg Abbott (R-TX) sending migrants to liberal states, Wagner asked about a report that "DHS officials have presented the White House with some options including flying migrants to the country’s northern border with Canada to alleviate overcrowding on the U.S. Mexico border." Wagner then asked, "how that is meaningfully different than what DeSantis and Abbott are doing?"
Proving how she is nothing but a diversity hire, Jean-Pierre mumbled and fumbled her way through that very simple question without actually answering it in any comprehensible way:
So, let me just say a couple of things about what's happening at the border. The DHS put out a report laying out what kind of a migration situation that we're dealing with, which is very new. I mentioned Venezuela, I mentioned Nicaragua, I mentioned Cuba, we have seen an increase of about 121 percent from since last year of what's going on with these countries that are fleeing communism.
So that has gone up. And if you look at north central America in the last three months, we have seen a decrease of about 43 percent. So we're in a different kind of migration component right now and so we have to deal with where we are. So the way we have worked this thing is that there's Title 42, which is a court-ordered process that we have to go through. It’s a CDC health authority. It's not an immigration authority. And so people are automatically expelled. For those who are not, they go through a legal process. And right now what we've been able to do in the past 19 months, and the past year, is we've seen a very much increase, a historic increase, of people that we have been able to expel out of the country.
She then attempted to blame the Trump administration, claiming "the system is broken. We know that. It was decimated by the last administration. And what we're trying to do is fix something that has had decades and decades of deterioration."
Jean-Pierre subsequently proclaimed that the only way to permanently fix the immigration system is to get Congress to act and begged: "we're asking Republicans, hey instead of playing political games, why don't you join us in trying to fix a real problem that's happening at the border?"
Wagner jumped to clarify: "So these measures Title 42, a Trump era holdover, flying migrants to other cities, you see these as stop-gap measures?"
With a straight face, Jean-Pierre made the laughably false declaration that "the border is not open" and "we're doing everything that we can to make sure that we're dealing with this issue. It's a crisis that has been decimated. The system has been decimated by the last administration."
"These political games, we're gonna call them out. They are really inhumane and inappropriate," she snarked.
Wagner never corrected her for her many false statements like claiming the border "is not open" and that Republicans are playing games on immigration. Neither of which is true.
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To read the relevant transcript click "expand":
MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Tonight
9/20/2022
9:37:07 p.m. EasternALEX WAGNER: We have some reporting from NBC. The DHS officials have presented the White House with some options including flying migrants to the country’s northern border with Canada to alleviate overcrowding on the U.S. Mexico border. Under a plan proposed by DHS, migrants would be sent to such cities as Los Angeles, where shelters would get an advanced warning to have time to prepare for the influx. Now I know some people are gonna say, sending migrants on planes -- wait, wait, wait, alarm bells. Tell me how that is meaningfully different than what DeSantis and Abbott are doing.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: So, let me just say a couple of things about what's happening at the border. The DHS put out a report laying out what kind of a migration situation that we're dealing with, which is very new. I mentioned Venezuela, I mentioned Nicaragua, I mentioned Cuba, we have seen an increase of about 121 percent from since last year of what's going on with these countries that are fleeing communism.
So that has gone up. And if you look at north central America in the last three months, we have seen a decrease of about 43 percent. So we're in a different kind of migration component right now and so we have to deal with where we are. So the way we have worked this thing is that there's Title 42, which is a court-ordered process that we have to go through. It’s a CDC health authority. It's not an immigration authority. And so people are automatically expelled. For those who are not, they go through a legal process. And right now what we've been able to do in the past 19 months, and the past year, is we've seen a very much increase, a historic increase, of people that we have been able to expel out of the country.
So that is something that we have been able to do. Look, the system is broken. We know that. It was decimated by the last administration. And what we're trying to do is fix something that has had decades and decades of deterioration. When you look at the system. So what we're asking is we’re asking to really fix it in a way that is transformative. And to do that is really Congress acting and we're asking Republicans, hey instead of playing political games, why don't you join us in trying to fix a real problem that's happening at the border?
WAGNER: So these measures Title 42, a Trump era holdover, flying migrants to other cities, you see these as stop-gap measures?
JEAN-PIERRE: Because we have to fix what's actually broken.
WAGNER: Well yeah.
JEAN-PIERRE: Right? And if we don't do that, then we're not truly addressing an issue that is affecting all of us. And so, look, the border is not open, we're doing everything that we can to make sure that we're dealing with this issue. It's a crisis that has been decimated. The system has been decimated by the last administration, and so we’re going to do everything that we can. But again, these political games, we're gonna call them out. They are really inhumane and inappropriate.
