On MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, guest host and daughter of corrupt New Jersey Democrat Senator Robert Menendez, Alicia Menendez seemed shocked that forty percent of voters on a recent Gallup poll want immigration decreased, yet Menendez and her guest Victoria DeFrancesco of the Clinton School of Public Service dismissed Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s visit to the U.S. Mexico border as “political theater.”
Menendez admitted that the Gallup poll numbers on American dissatisfaction with immigration had caught her eye. “63 percent of Americans in this poll saying they’re dissatisfied with immigration. 40 percent saying they want to see it decrease,” Menendez said reading off the results of the poll.
Despite yet more evidence that her entire ideology on immigration is wildly unpopular, Menendez went back to her talking points and called McCarthy’s border visit “political theater.”
“If this is political theater, if that is the reason that Kevin McCarthy is at the border with Republicans, does that theater have an audience?,” she asked.
DeFrancesco responded that McCarthy’s alleged political theater at the southern border does have an audience and “regrettably it's because the border continues to be broken and we don't see any solution.”
She didn’t want to completely disappoint the MSNBC audience. DeFrancesco dug up a nugget of good news from an NBC poll that showed “even though we're dissatisfied with the state of immigration, we do know that 80 percent of Americans do believe in a path to citizenship for dreamers, who are essentially, folks who are here with a certain status.”
“So, Americans are frustrated with immigration, but Americans are also sensible and know that if we can piecemeal this, that we can resolve immigration,” DeFrancesco concluded.
While polls can be worded and manipulated to create any predetermined result the pollster desires, it’s much more reasonable to believe that Americans are more concerned with the out of control crisis on the southern border than they are about appeasing so called “dreamers.” Yet that appeared to be the conclusion MSNBC gleamed.
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MSNBC’s The 11th Hour
2/16/2023
11:36:36 p.m. EasternALICIA MENENDEZ: I want to bring up some recent Gallup polling on immigration. These numbers caught my eye. 63 percent of Americans in this poll saying they’re dissatisfied with immigration. 40 percent saying they want to see it decrease. If this is political theater, if that is the reason that Kevin McCarthy is at the border with Republicans, does that theater have an audience?
VICTORIA DEFRANCESCO SOTO (DEAN, UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS CLINTON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC SERVICE): It does, Alicia, and regrettably it's because the border continues to be broken and we don't see any solution. Any tangible solution coming forward. That being said, there's been dissatisfaction for a long time. I don't know that makes things better, but essentially, for the past 20 years, we've seen that dissatisfaction hover in that range of anywhere from 30 to 40 percent.
That's just a fact. But I do want to bring up one very positive fact, and one statistic that we saw just last month from some NBC polling, was that even though we're dissatisfied with the state of immigration, we do know that 80 percent of Americans do believe in a path to citizenship for dreamers, who are essentially, folks who are here with a certain status.
So, Americans are frustrated with immigration, but Americans are also sensible and know that if we can piecemeal this, that we can resolve immigration. Political theater isn't gonna cut it, and I think that this is what frustrates me the most, when Americans are pointing to we're frustrated, we need a solution.
