Chuck Todd, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Political Director and host of The Daily Rundown on MSNBC, did his best to separate the current immigration crisis from the overall immigration debate taking place in our country.
During an appearance on Meet the Press on Sunday, July 6, Todd maintained that “we have immigration law conflation going on here. This crisis is separate from the immigration issue that’s been debated here in Washington but it’s been conflated obviously back and forth.” [See video below.]
After criticizing the administration for not giving a “straight answer” on whether the illegal immigrants will be deported, the NBC News political director attempted to explain away Obama’s failure to solve the crisis at the border. Todd insisted that “there was ambiguity in his [Secretary Jeh Johnson] answer to you about is there going to be an attempt to increase do you want the ability to increase the amount of deportations? They’ve been afraid to say that and it’s the politics of this right?”
Todd continued to deflect blame from the Obama Administration by proclaiming the current crisis has nothing to do with immigration reform being debated in Washington before lamenting the so-called political problem facing the White House:
I think part of the problem is you have an administration that on one hand has immigrant rights groups wanting them to expand some of the executive orders, including maybe dreamers, this DACA thing, dreamers for the parents. And in exchange, they know politically in order to get away with that, they do have to increase the deportation but they don't want to say it.
Nowhere in the NBC Political Director’s assessment did he mention that perhaps it was President Obama’s unwillingness to enforce current immigration law, rather than issuing executive orders such as DACA, that have made immigration reform impossible to pass. Instead, Todd argued that such executive orders may need to go even further to satisfy those on the left.
See relevant transcript below.
NBC
Meet the Press
July 6, 2014
DAVID GREGORY: So Chuck, from Secretary Johnson, I think an ambiguous response to what they are going to do and how exactly we got here.
CHUCK TODD: It's been that way. It was that way Thursday in the White House briefing. You could not get a straight answer out of the administration. You couldn't get them to say, should the president's image be used to send this message in Central America for instance. To send the message, hey, don't send your kids here. This isn't going to happen. There was ambiguity in his answer to you about is there going to be an attempt to increase do you want the ability to increase the amount of deportations?
They’ve been afraid to say that and it’s the politics of this right? You know, we have immigration law conflation going on here. This crisis is separate from the immigration issue that’s been debated here in Washington but it’s been conflated obviously back and forth. And I think part of the problem is you have an administration that on one hand has immigrant rights groups wanting them to expand some of the executive orders, including maybe dreamers, this DACA thing, dreamers for the parents. And in exchange, they know politically in order to get away with that, they do have to increase the deportation but they don't want to say it.
