On Friday's Money, Power, and Politics on MS NOW, fill-in host Ali Vitali fretted that President Donald Trump is "otherizing" illegal alien truck drivers while replacing them with veterans, but did not mention the problem of many such illegal aliens causing car crash deaths.
In contrast with Fox News, which has given substantial coverage to the issue of illegal aliens who are unable to pass driving tests being given commercial drivers licenses in blue states, and then going on to cause deadly car crashes, MS NOW has a history of barely mentioning such truckers.
Damian Paletta, the anti-Trump Washington Bureau Chief at The Wall Street Journal, told Vitali the Trump administration is trying to “do as much as they can to get their immigration agenda through” before the midterms, because if Democrats take over one house of Congress or both, “there might be huge roadblocks in the next year.”
As Vitali recalled the "Freedom Haulers" program by the Trump administration to recruit American veterans to be truckers, she commented:
MSNOW Frets Trump 'Otherizing' Illegal Alien Truckers, No Mention of Crash Deaths pic.twitter.com/dmv3dEgdBS
— Brad Wilmouth (@bradwilmouth) August 2, 2026
I don't think anyone is arguing that we shouldn't be helping our veterans find jobs, but I think it's important to put this through the lens of the way that the administration is doing it and the way that they are otherizing people who are here in an undocumented fashion in the process.
Reporter Vaughn Hillyard only vaguely mentioned that some immigrants had "lost their trucking licenses because they were immigrant truck drivers" as he responded:
Right. This is sort of the immigration policy that is not always necessarily explicitly clear by the President himself. This event yesterday suggested that in order to replace the thousands of truck drivers that lost their trucking licenses because they were immigrant truck drivers, that instead the administration is going to fast track for eligible veterans, commercial driver's licenses for veterans, and essentially to try to highlight that American workers can replace immigrant workers here in the United States. That's the pitch in the message coming from the President.
Transcript follows:
MS NOW's Money, Power and Politics
July 31, 2026
9:22 a.m. Eastern
ALI VITALI: You're right to talk about the policy, too, because your colleagues at the (Wall Street) Journal have reporting around a $100,000 fee for international students that end up wanting to work in the U.S. that could lead to some kind of a brain drain as well. But I think, Vaughn, the idea that it's not just what the Journal is reporting, it's also some reporting about a new piece of the immigration agenda, this so-called "freedom haulers" initiative to replace undocumented truck drivers with military veterans. I don't think anyone is arguing that we shouldn't be helping our veterans find jobs, but I think it's important to put this through the lens of the way that the administration is doing it and the way that they are otherizing people who are here in an undocumented fashion in the process.
VAUGHN HILLYARD: Right. This is sort of the immigration policy that is not always necessarily explicitly clear by the President himself. This event yesterday suggested that in order to replace the thousands of truck drivers that lost their trucking licenses because they were immigrant truck drivers, that instead the administration is going to fast track for eligible veterans, commercial driver's licenses for veterans, and essentially to try to highlight that American workers can replace immigrant workers here in the United States. That's the pitch in the message coming from the President.
And we have heard, especially out of this White House, J.D. Vance has been on the front lines of pushing restriction on not just undocumented immigration, but even more so on legal immigration itself. And he was the one that was pushing for a crackdown, a restriction on ... H1B1 visas, and even to the story from the Wall Street Journal, you know, there was the conversation last year where actually the President himself came out in defense of those South Korean nationals that were working at the Hyundai battery plant down in Georgia that were set to be sent out of the country. And he said, well, they're needed -- that high skilled workers are needed.
And he acknowledged that there are high-skill industries where, whether it be recent college graduates who study in the United States or other high-skilled workers, that come on -- on those visas -- that they are needed to do the work that, frankly, the American labor pool is not able to provide. And so I think for this administration, this particular event was looking at something that doesn't require a college education, for instance, that -- not that level of high-skilled labor, and instead turning to something else where they had a crackdown on the immigration front when it came to truck driver licenses and trying to find a means to fill those -- fill those roles -- jobs with American veterans.
