Ahead of primetime address, Trump hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt on immigration

[DonViejo]

First Read is your briefing from "Meet the Press" and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter.

Jan. 8, 2019 / 8:58 AM EST
By Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann

WASHINGTON — Tonight, on Day 18 of the government shutdown, President Trump is set to deliver a prime-time address to “address the nation on the humanitarian and national security crisis on our southern border.”

Being president may give you the right to ask networks for time for an Oval Office address. But on immigration — perhaps more than on any other issue — Trump is far from having earned the benefit of the doubt from the American people.

Since the beginning of his campaign, the framework of Trump’s immigration rhetoric has been full of easily fact-checked exaggerations (“It could be 30 million” undocumented immigrants in the United States), plain demagoguery (“They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists”), conspiracy theories (“Democrats want to invite caravan after caravan of illegal aliens into our country”), unrealistic promises (“Mexico will pay for the wall”), and attention-grabbing ploys (floating an executive order end to birthright citizenship a week before the midterms.)

And most recently, NBC News reports that, during the first half of 2018, U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped just six immigrants at the southern border whose names were on a terror watch list, contradicting a 4,000 figure that’s been used by the White House as recently as Friday to justify the need for a border wall.

On the one hand, a president who has consistently characterized mainstream media as “fake news” and “the enemy of the people” is now demanding the bully pulpit to push an immigration agenda about which he’s commonly spread misinformation. That’s led critics to slam media outlets for giving him high-profile airtime.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/ahead-primetime-address-trump-hasn-t-earned-benefit-doubt-immigration-n956076?cid=public-rss_20190108