WEBVTT - Immigration Window Dressing.  John Daniel Davidson talks to Armstrong & Getty

0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:02.920
<v Speaker 1>Pump's own DHS came out and said, we read this

0:00:02.960 --> 0:00:05.520
<v Speaker 1>emergency funding and we need a lot of it to

0:00:05.640 --> 0:00:08.239
<v Speaker 1>deal with this crisis. This is not politics. This is

0:00:08.280 --> 0:00:12.400
<v Speaker 1>a humanitarian crisis. Trump's own department said this, um and

0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:14.800
<v Speaker 1>in twenty if you just look back, I mentioned this before,

0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:18.600
<v Speaker 1>but that's a similar crisis inteen not as big. Uh.

0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:21.120
<v Speaker 1>The bomb administration put forward is similar for a million

0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:25.479
<v Speaker 1>dollars a billion dollar emergency spending proposal UH supplemental to

0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:27.360
<v Speaker 1>try to deal with their own crisis at the border,

0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:30.680
<v Speaker 1>and was not passed. Both parties went into recess. Republicans

0:00:30.680 --> 0:00:33.000
<v Speaker 1>were blocking that idea in the House. Now you haven't flipped.

0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:35.600
<v Speaker 1>Republicans are saying, well, the Republican administration is saying we

0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:37.479
<v Speaker 1>need the money, but that doesn't look like the political

0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:42.680
<v Speaker 1>will to do anything. Trump's a racist. David David knock

0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:45.440
<v Speaker 1>Amer on face the nation. I think it was trying

0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:48.400
<v Speaker 1>to make the point that a couple of presidents in

0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:51.040
<v Speaker 1>our own now have tried to deal with a major,

0:00:51.120 --> 0:00:53.920
<v Speaker 1>major problem, but a variety of reasons that we've talked

0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:56.600
<v Speaker 1>about for years now, the politics don't allow that to happen.

0:00:56.680 --> 0:00:59.320
<v Speaker 1>This is no way to run our country. Please welcome

0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:02.720
<v Speaker 1>John Annual Davidson to the show. John is a senior

0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:05.720
<v Speaker 1>correspondent and federalist. Is written a number of things actually

0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:10.160
<v Speaker 1>about immigration lately, including a piece in recent days as

0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:13.839
<v Speaker 1>illegal immigration skyrockets the border crisis spins out of control, John,

0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:17.080
<v Speaker 1>how are you, sir, doing well? Thanks for having me. Oh,

0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:20.319
<v Speaker 1>it's our pleasure, so listen. Uh, you know, depending on

0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:22.880
<v Speaker 1>who you ask, you get all sorts of different descriptors,

0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:25.520
<v Speaker 1>but I think they're all true. It is a humanitarian crisis,

0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:30.760
<v Speaker 1>it's a logistical crisis, a legal crisis, financial, constitutional, It's

0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:35.760
<v Speaker 1>a mess. And it's dangerous too, isn't it. It's extremely dangerous,

0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:40.560
<v Speaker 1>and as the numbers of illegal immigrants continue to rise,

0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:44.520
<v Speaker 1>we're going to continue to see more people die at

0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:48.200
<v Speaker 1>the border, either after they crossed the border or attempting

0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:52.240
<v Speaker 1>to cross the rio grand um. You know these reports

0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:56.360
<v Speaker 1>don't often make headlines or uh, you know, get written

0:01:56.440 --> 0:01:59.680
<v Speaker 1>up in the news media, partly because it's so frequent.

0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:02.680
<v Speaker 1>But you know, you imagine the worst things you can

0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:05.680
<v Speaker 1>think of happening at the border, and they've probably happened

0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:07.880
<v Speaker 1>in the last month. Well, I know you outline your

0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:12.080
<v Speaker 1>story infants and handicapped people drowning or dying of dehydration

0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:13.800
<v Speaker 1>in the desert, and the rest of it. How does

0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:16.960
<v Speaker 1>that stuff time make more news? Doesn't have to do

0:02:17.000 --> 0:02:20.359
<v Speaker 1>with Yeah, I don't know it yet. Part of it

0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:23.960
<v Speaker 1>is that it's the steady drum beat. It's happening constantly. Uh.

0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:26.000
<v Speaker 1>You know, I think for a lot of Americans, it's

0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:29.520
<v Speaker 1>hard to even imagine what the border is. Uh. You know,

0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:32.200
<v Speaker 1>the news media doesn't have anything like the excuse of

0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:35.960
<v Speaker 1>regular Americans. You know, they really should spend more time

0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:39.120
<v Speaker 1>on the border. Um. It's not hard to do. Just

0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:41.840
<v Speaker 1>book a flight down to El Paso and you know,

0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:45.200
<v Speaker 1>right around with the border patrol and you'll see for yourself. Um,

0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:47.600
<v Speaker 1>but it is sort of hard to imagine what it's like.

0:02:47.840 --> 0:02:51.080
<v Speaker 1>It's also hard to imagine how dangerous it is on

0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:54.240
<v Speaker 1>the other side of the border. Raynosa is the city

0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:57.520
<v Speaker 1>in Mexico right across from the Texas town of McAllen.

0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:00.880
<v Speaker 1>It's not a big place. McAllen about a hundred fifty

0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:03.560
<v Speaker 1>thousand people. Rains is a little bit bigger, but it's

0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:05.640
<v Speaker 1>one of the most dangerous cities in the world. And

0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:07.840
<v Speaker 1>I don't think a lot of Americans quite grasped that

0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:13.160
<v Speaker 1>you've got hundreds of thousands now of Central Americans. And

0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:15.639
<v Speaker 1>that's one of the big issues is that it's families,

0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:19.840
<v Speaker 1>it's women and children, sometimes children rented out by the cartels.

0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:23.960
<v Speaker 1>And this is so fundamentally different from years ago when

0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:26.959
<v Speaker 1>it was strapping twenty four year old Mexican young men,

0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:31.320
<v Speaker 1>and that that logistical challenge is just enormous. John Once

0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:35.920
<v Speaker 1>once folks get apprehended or turn themselves in, Yeah, it's

0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:38.520
<v Speaker 1>it's fundamentally different than it was even ten years ago,

0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:41.360
<v Speaker 1>to say nothing of twenty or thirty years ago. All

0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.080
<v Speaker 1>the facilities that we have built up over the course

0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:46.560
<v Speaker 1>of the past thirty or forty years along the border

0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:50.600
<v Speaker 1>were designed to hold single Mexican adults because those were

0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:52.680
<v Speaker 1>the people that were trying to cross into the country

0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:56.400
<v Speaker 1>and evade detection. Uh. And they were coming here to work.

0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:59.160
<v Speaker 1>They were coming to work in all different industries, in

0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:02.440
<v Speaker 1>all different parts the country. Uh. The facilities that we

0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:08.000
<v Speaker 1>have now are wholly inappropriate for families and small children. Uh.

0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:13.280
<v Speaker 1>And you know, um, sometimes pregnant women sometimes infants uh

0:04:13.400 --> 0:04:15.800
<v Speaker 1>that that are are crossing, you know, with with the

0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:19.640
<v Speaker 1>with their mothers. Uh. So it's not as easy as

0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:21.640
<v Speaker 1>just saying, oh, you know, well, let's get some better

0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:24.279
<v Speaker 1>facilities down there. It takes a long time to build

0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:26.960
<v Speaker 1>these facilities. It took us decades to build up the

0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:29.880
<v Speaker 1>infrastructure we have there, and now we're facing a completely

0:04:29.880 --> 0:04:32.800
<v Speaker 1>different problem. Well, we're talking about how it's some of

0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:34.800
<v Speaker 1>the bad stuff is not getting enough attention, so people

0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:36.880
<v Speaker 1>don't realize what a crisis is is let's not hide

0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:38.600
<v Speaker 1>it from our listeners, spell it out and you talk

0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:40.159
<v Speaker 1>about it in your piece. What are some of the

0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:41.839
<v Speaker 1>bad things that are happening on the border on a

0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:45.400
<v Speaker 1>daily basis. Well, one of the things that we talked

0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:48.560
<v Speaker 1>about in the pieces that people are dying. Uh. If

0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:52.160
<v Speaker 1>you follow the news releases and the media statements from

0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:56.960
<v Speaker 1>the border patrol, uh, you know themselves, you'll see this.

0:04:57.240 --> 0:05:00.359
<v Speaker 1>It's a pretty routine thing. People are found h dying

0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:03.680
<v Speaker 1>or dead after they crossed into the United States and

0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:09.000
<v Speaker 1>remote areas. UM. In some cases, infant children will drowned

0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:12.160
<v Speaker 1>in the Rio Grand or nearly drowned before border patrol

0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:14.880
<v Speaker 1>can rescue them. There was a case last week of

0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:19.960
<v Speaker 1>smugglers on the Mexican side throwing into the river a

0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:23.760
<v Speaker 1>double amputee and another band who was a paraplegic, who

0:05:23.839 --> 0:05:28.880
<v Speaker 1>both of whom almost drowned before border patrol could rescue them. Uh,

0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:31.240
<v Speaker 1>really bad stuff is going on, and a lot of

0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:33.240
<v Speaker 1>it is being driven And this is another thing I

0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:35.280
<v Speaker 1>think people don't realize. A lot of this is being

0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:39.200
<v Speaker 1>driven by what is essentially a huge black market for

0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:43.920
<v Speaker 1>human smuggling. Smuggling networks and drug cartels are making billions

0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:48.440
<v Speaker 1>of dollars a year off of smuggling Central Americans through

0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:52.719
<v Speaker 1>Mexico up to and across the US border. They're charging

0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:57.480
<v Speaker 1>them between two and seven thousand dollars sometimes more per person.

0:05:57.839 --> 0:05:59.760
<v Speaker 1>And you think about the hundreds of thousands of people

0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:03.719
<v Speaker 1>that are coming, it adds up. John Daniel Davidson, Senior

0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:05.839
<v Speaker 1>correspondent at the Federal It's just one more question for

0:06:05.880 --> 0:06:07.880
<v Speaker 1>you from me, John. I read in your piece that

0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:10.680
<v Speaker 1>you have pretty serious doubts as to whether the six

0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:13.560
<v Speaker 1>thousand Mexican National guardsman sent to the border will do

0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:17.359
<v Speaker 1>any make any serious difference to the number of Central

0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:23.040
<v Speaker 1>Americans coming into Mexico. Why the doubt because the Mexican

0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:27.560
<v Speaker 1>National Guard is an institution that was created very recently,

0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:32.200
<v Speaker 1>and Mexico has a real problem with their institutions being compromised,

0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:36.880
<v Speaker 1>uh by corruption by drug cartels. Uh. This is not

0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:39.520
<v Speaker 1>a serious thing. This is window dressing on the part

0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:42.240
<v Speaker 1>of the Mexican government to avoid tariffs, and we shouldn't

0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:43.960
<v Speaker 1>expect it to make much of a difference. You know,

0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:47.280
<v Speaker 1>that's obviously true. If there are billions of dollars at

0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:52.360
<v Speaker 1>stake for the drug cartels or or whoever is making

0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:55.080
<v Speaker 1>all the money off the smuggling, you're not gonna let

0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:59.320
<v Speaker 1>some nineteen year old guardsmen in Mexico slow you down.

0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:02.520
<v Speaker 1>You're either gonna writing number bribe them, right, And that's analysis.

0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:05.839
<v Speaker 1>I hadn't heard from anybody but John Well well done,

0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:08.760
<v Speaker 1>John Daniel Davidson from the Federalist. Give our best wishes

0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:12.760
<v Speaker 1>to Molly Molly Hemingway, would you if you run into her?

0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:18.040
<v Speaker 1>Well done? John M's talk again soon. I don't want

0:07:18.080 --> 0:07:20.800
<v Speaker 1>that to be true. I want this to get solved, right,

0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:24.200
<v Speaker 1>But obviously, if you've got drug cartels who own the

0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:28.640
<v Speaker 1>police force of some cities, of course they're going to

0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:32.280
<v Speaker 1>be able to well, they own the frigging governor, so yeah,

0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:34.800
<v Speaker 1>of course they're going to be able to infiltrate the

0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:39.800
<v Speaker 1>National Guard or whatever they call them there. Yeah, I

0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:42.360
<v Speaker 1>mean they might have to. They'll call the commander of

0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:45.320
<v Speaker 1>the guard, the head of the cartel. We'll say, hey,

0:07:45.760 --> 0:07:48.320
<v Speaker 1>you know, Hector, how are you. I'm good, Jose, how

0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:51.440
<v Speaker 1>are you? I'm terrific. Listen, I understand you guys are

0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:53.520
<v Speaker 1>gonna be doing this on the border. What do I

0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:55.760
<v Speaker 1>need to know? Yeah, well, let me get you the

0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:58.960
<v Speaker 1>patrol schedule and we'll we'll go from there. All right,

0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:02.720
<v Speaker 1>thanks best to a wife. I mean, it's literally like that.

0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:05.080
<v Speaker 1>Well we learned that from the old Chappo trial. They

0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:08.440
<v Speaker 1>had transcripts of conversations like that, including the at the

0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:13.720
<v Speaker 1>time president of the country allegedly um so yeah. I

0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:15.920
<v Speaker 1>have a feeling that that's too bad. I wonder if

0:08:16.480 --> 0:08:19.280
<v Speaker 1>I wonder if anybody, if from Mexico, including the president

0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:25.960
<v Speaker 1>who's the president of Mexican Labrador retriever, if he's said

0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:28.080
<v Speaker 1>to Trump on the phone, or anybody has said, look,

0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:30.840
<v Speaker 1>I'd like to remember the man's name. I'm sorry, that's

0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:33.960
<v Speaker 1>just how I Dobrador over. I wonder if anybody has

0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:36.760
<v Speaker 1>said to Trump our our our DHS secretary or anything,

0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:39.720
<v Speaker 1>he said, look, we'd like to we can't, we can't.

0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:42.960
<v Speaker 1>We We've got many cities where we have no control

0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:44.960
<v Speaker 1>over the police force. We can't have we can't have

0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:48.760
<v Speaker 1>a trial. We we can't. There's no way we can

0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:51.719
<v Speaker 1>do this. It can't be done. What if they ever

0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:55.040
<v Speaker 1>say that, I think they probably have ways to hint

0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:58.040
<v Speaker 1>at it behind the scenes, you're lower, lower level talks.

0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:02.760
<v Speaker 1>But this, this is exhibit number one of how idiotic

0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:05.720
<v Speaker 1>the partisanship has become in the United States. Because, as

0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:07.360
<v Speaker 1>I've said many times, you can get a panel of

0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:11.160
<v Speaker 1>randomly selected Americans and they could pass common sense immigration

0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:14.360
<v Speaker 1>reform in minutes. Explain to them, listen, most people come

0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:18.960
<v Speaker 1>become well, listen, here's a great example. You got Gavin

0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:23.080
<v Speaker 1>freaking Newsom, pretty pretty Gavin Newsom, the mayor of Kelly, Unicornia,

0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:25.400
<v Speaker 1>who is now pushed and gotten past this law that

0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:28.720
<v Speaker 1>anybody who sneaks into California gets free healthcare up to

0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:30.840
<v Speaker 1>the age of twenty five and over the age of

0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:33.200
<v Speaker 1>sixty or whatever it is. I can't remember, Uh, the

0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:36.040
<v Speaker 1>old and the young, and sooner it will be everybody.

0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:42.360
<v Speaker 1>If you are a Honduran and you've got all the

0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:47.040
<v Speaker 1>problems of Central America, violence, gangs, corruption, poverty, the rest

0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:51.040
<v Speaker 1>of it, if you don't do whatever you can to

0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:54.160
<v Speaker 1>get to California specifically, I mean the United States, and

0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:55.640
<v Speaker 1>once you get in, if you have a kid with

0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:58.200
<v Speaker 1>your rented or otherwise, they'll turn you loose because they

0:09:58.200 --> 0:09:59.959
<v Speaker 1>can't hold you. So once you get in the state,

0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:02.520
<v Speaker 1>you just then get to California somehow. But if you

0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:06.480
<v Speaker 1>don't do that, you're a bad person. You're a fool.

0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:10.120
<v Speaker 1>I can't imagine why you haven't yet. So you know,

0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:14.480
<v Speaker 1>until the magnets, and the magnets are getting bigger and bigger,

0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:17.840
<v Speaker 1>until they're removed or the juice is turned off to them,

0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:22.439
<v Speaker 1>there's virtually nothing Mexico Mexico can do, and damn near

0:10:22.520 --> 0:10:26.439
<v Speaker 1>nothing we can do about it. So nobody's nobody's serious.

0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:29.160
<v Speaker 1>That's what makes me crazy. Even people who agree, they

0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:31.640
<v Speaker 1>spend their time shouting at each other about Trump and

0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:34.280
<v Speaker 1>nothing changes, and it's no way to run a country.

0:10:34.280 --> 0:10:36.280
<v Speaker 1>It is interesting that you have old people in babies

0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:38.120
<v Speaker 1>dying on the border and it's not getting more attention

0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:40.560
<v Speaker 1>than it is because I guess it's not a clear

0:10:40.600 --> 0:10:46.080
<v Speaker 1>cut this is Trump's fault thing, so it's just oxygen,

0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:49.920
<v Speaker 1>as they say, very frustrating. Our text line as always

0:10:50.000 --> 0:10:53.080
<v Speaker 1>is four one five to nine five k f TC

0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:55.920
<v Speaker 1>four one five two nine five k f TC. Well,

0:10:55.920 --> 0:10:57.520
<v Speaker 1>it looks like the tariffs are off, So what's your

0:10:57.559 --> 0:11:00.880
<v Speaker 1>favorite guacamole recipe for one of two nine five k

0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:04.400
<v Speaker 1>f tc Armstrong and Yettie