Trump is a genuine original
Let me risk a prophecy: Future Presidents are now going to feel that they have to do this too
Donald Trump gave an impassioned speech Tuesday to a group of business leaders in Washington, D.C., in which he hammered the recent outrage over immigration policies.
Recent media outrage over the administration’s enforcement of America’s border laws — that result in the separating some families at the border if they seek asylum after crossing the border illegally at non-checkpoint locations — has captured the nation’s attention.
Trump took the fight directly to the media in the speech, saying they were on the side of the smugglers and human traffickers who operate on our borders. The president also hit back at Hillary Clinton for attacking him over open borders criticism.
The president also hit Obamacare taxes and regulations and lauded his tax cuts in front of the business leaders. “Cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts,” Trump said.
The room was enthusiastic toward Trump and his attacks on various political opponents, regularly applauding and cheering passionately.
As Trump exited the stage, he took a moment to wave at the audience. Then, the president approached an American flag in the corner of the room and gave it a hug.
It was not the first time that Trump has given a hug to the American flag. He also did so on the campaign trail.
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Trump blesses House Republicans' new compromise immigration bill
A lot of GOP congressmen were initially skeptical of Trump but his successes have now given him authority. So we see that his support is expected to change minds towards voting for the bill
President Trump blessed House Republicans’ new compromise immigration bill “1,000 percent” Tuesday, giving political cover to conservatives looking to back the bill and creating momentum ahead of a showdown vote expected later this week.
He said the legislation, which grants citizenship rights to illegal immigrant “Dreamers,” funds his border wall, limits the chain of family migration and ends the visa lottery, checks off all the boxes on his immediate immigration wishlist.
Meeting with Republicans for an hour Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump told them he would welcome a fix to the family separation issue that’s engulfed the immigration debate this week. But he made clear any action will have to come from Congress, not from the administration.
His blessing clears up the mess he left last Friday, when he said he “wouldn’t sign” the bill. The White House later said he misunderstood the question, but his wavering had left a number of conservatives fearful of voting for the bill only to have the president walk away from the legislation, leaving them on a political ledge.
“He says I am behind you 1,000 percent and I am not going to leave you out to dry,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers, chair of the House Republican Conference.
Whether that’s good enough to win 218 Republicans — the number needed to approve the bill — is unclear. “It’s going to be close,” said Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who helped craft the compromise bill. “This is a very challenging issue, very controversial. All members are going to have to take some risks to make this happen.”
Rep. Mark Meadows, head of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, said he’s still weighing his own vote, but the bill is a no-go for some conservatives. “I think there are some who believe that it is amnesty and they don’t want to vote for amnesty,” he said. He also said there are some on the liberal side of the party who wanted a more generous legalization for Dreamers.
“We represent very different districts,” he said. “The thing that motivates me to stay involved is I think the moderates negotiated in good faith - whether we get to 218 or not I don’t know.”
GOP leaders released the official version of the bill Tuesday evening while Mr. Trump was meeting with them.
The bill would grant full legal status and a path to citizenship to people who qualify for the Obama-era DACA program. The bill also ends the visa lottery and limits the types of family members that can be sponsored for immigration — then takes those visas and uses them on the DACA population and other children brought to the U.S. by their parents.
In terms of enforcement, the bill allows Homeland Security to detain more people and deport them faster, and it increases the threshold for people attempting to claim asylum, with a goal of cutting down on fraudulent claims that have clogged the system.
GOP leaders tucked in a new fix for the family separation issue, allowing the government to hold children and their parents in immigration detention facilities for longer than 20 days. The bill also says that illegal immigrant parents charged with misdemeanors, who normally would be sent to the criminal justice system’s jails, can be held in immigration detention — meaning they can remain with their children.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan told The Washington Times Mr. Trump got a good reception from the party. “It was great,” he said.
Outside the meeting a group of Democrats marched along the corridors holding signs that said, “Families Belong Together,” and that depicted some of the now-iconic photos of children and their parents at the border.
As the president walked through one of the Capitol’s corridors a heckler shouted at him “Mister President, F– you!” An NBC reporter said on Twitter that the culprit was a congressional intern.
Earlier Tuesday some of the president’s key supporters warned him against embracing the bill. The National ICE Council, the union that represents officers at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the bill falls short on a number of the president’s campaign promises.
Chris Crane, the council president, wrote a letter to Mr. Trump saying the bill would open the door to massive fraud, would allow people who defied judges’ deportation orders to get on a pathway to citizenship, and fails to make good on Mr. Trump’s promise of a deportation force of 10,000 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
He labeled the bill the “Ryan amnesty” and said it also repeats the same mistakes of the failed 2013 “Gang of 8” immigration bill.
“You pledged publicly to ‘have the backs’ of the men and women of ICE law enforcement. I am asking you to keep that promise,” Mr. Crane wrote. The ICE Council endorsed Mr. Trump on the campaign trail in 2016.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia said he is “sympathetic to their concerns” but that the compromise is better than alternative proposals that they would have “hated.”
“But we really have to do something that can get to 218 votes and some of the people who are in that negotiation did not support their request,” Mr. Goodlatte said. “This happened very quickly and if they don’t think they were consulted enough I understand that.”
GOP leaders plan two votes later this week.
One would be on an enforcement-heavy bill written months ago by Mr. Goodlatte and Rep. Michael McCaul, chairmen of the two key committees. That bill includes a renewable DACA permit but doesn’t give Dreamers a pathway to citizenship. It does include a host of new enforcement measures such as requiring businesses to use E-Verify to check their workers, cracking down on sanctuary cities and making it a misdemeanor to overstay a visa.
Those measures went too far for many Republicans and the Goodlatte bill struggled to reach 218 supporters.
So GOP leaders pushed Mr. Goodlatte, Mr. McCaul and moderate lawmakers to work on the compromise bill.
Mr. Trump had previous backed the enforcement-heavy bill, but his full-throated support for the compromise was critical.
“Folks that would have been against it, I think it’s harder for them to be against it now,” said Rep. Bill Flores, Texas Republican. “I think he probably changed a lot of minds.”
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CNN Tries To Shame Border Patrol Agent — He Flips The Script And Leaves Host Speechless
The dear little lady interviewer has got her lashes on, her blusher on and her hair just right but she forgot to fill her head up with knowledge of her subject
CNN brought on Chris Cabrera, a spokesperson for the National Border Patrol Council, Tuesday to discuss the Trump administration enforcing America’s border laws.
The Trump administration has enacted a policy of zero tolerance when enforcing America’s border laws. The laws result in separating some families if they cross the border illegally at non-checkpoint locations.
CNN’s Brooke Baldwin brought on Cabrera to grill him over the enforcement of the policy. However, it was Baldwin who got the grilling when Cabrera fact-checked her over the status of immigrants at the border.
“There’s so much being thrown at people who don’t know as much about immigration certainly as you do as a border patrol agent, but there a a couple of ways to come into this country if you’re an undocumented immigrant and you come out on the Rio Grande river, that’s illegal,” Baldwin said.
Cabrera countered, “Even if you’re a U.S. citizen, it’s illegal.”
Baldwin then asked specifically about delays for asylum seekers.
Cabrera said bluntly, “We’ve had this situation going on for four years now. I don’t think you can necessarily blame it on one administration or another. It started under one and is continuing under another. It hasn’t been fixed and it needs to be fixed.”
He continued, “Right now we have this beacon of, ‘We’ll leave the light on for you and let you come illegally into the country.’ If you’ve seen some of the stuff we’ve seen, you’d understand how important it is to have a tough stance to divert people from coming here.”
Cabrera then bluntly told Baldwin some of the horrors he has seen.
“When you see a 12-year-old girl with a plan B pill, her parents put her on birth control because they know getting violated is part of the journey, that’s a terrible way to live. When you see a 4-year-old girl traveling alone with just her parents phone number written across her shirt. We had a 9-year-old boy have heat stroke in front of us and die with no family around. That’s because we’re allowing people to take advantage of this system.”
The retelling of the child horror stories elicited an audible gasp from Baldwin.
Cabrera went on to say that it’s up to Congress to change the law, but until then his agents will continue to enforce the laws on the books.
“Most of our agents are parents. I’ve seen guys and I’ve done it myself, you give your last bottle of water to a kid, you’ll take a toy out of your car to give to one of these kids because you know the situation they’re in.” Caberera said. “Agents are very sympathetic. We’re human, we’re fathers, we have families. We do a lot for the communities here, whether or not a camera is involved. Our agents are very involved. And nobody saves more lives along the southwestern border than the U.S. Border patrol.”
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Border Ranchers Shock MSNBC With Facts On Illegal Immigration
A husband and wife who ranch on the Rio Grande river told MSNBC on Tuesday that they believe President Trump is doing the right thing by enforcing border laws.
MSNBC tried to ask the couple a multitude of leading questions about the separation of families when they cross the border illegally, but the ranchers continuously smashed their narrative.
“When you see parents and children separated why do you support the policy that, to many people, appears to be heartless?” MSNBC’s Kerry Sanders asked.
“It’s basically the laws of our land,” Presnall Cage said. “Trump I believe is going in the right direction. I believe it’s going to be a deterrent to keep this from happening.”
Sanders asked Stephanie Cage, “You’re a mother, you’re a grandmother of seven, um, how do you react when you see that the families are being split apart?”
“Of course it is very upsetting, but I’m as equally upset with the parents for exposing their children to the dangers of smuggling their children across the border,” Cage replied.
The Cage family also debunked the notion that the vast majority of illegal immigrants are fleeing violence, retorting, “That’s very much exaggerated … very few cases are caused by that, I think most of them are coming over here to try to make a better life in this country and all this country has to offer.”
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US leaves UN Human Rights Council
They should leave the corrupt UN entirely -- or at least stop funding it
Washington has decided to walk out of the UN Human Rights Council. The US has long cited concerns about the body’s “anti-Israel bias.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley announced the decision at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.
This is the first time a member of the council would leave the body voluntarily. The US was halfway through its three-year term on the 47-member panel.
On Monday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein criticized Washington over the “unconscionable” policy of separating children of immigrants who cross the border illegally and holding them in detention centers. “I call on the United States to immediately end the practice of forcible separation of these children,” al-Hussein said.
While the timing of the US exit from the UN body coincides with this criticism, Washington’s objections to the Human Rights Council over the years have mostly been in regard to Israel. Ambassador Haley has accused the council of a “relentless, pathological campaign” against Israel, and said the US would leave unless the body gets rid of its “chronic anti-Israel bias.”
Shortly after its establishment in 2006, the council voted to make a review of alleged human rights abuses by Israel a permanent feature of every session, known as Agenda Item 7. Likewise, the body’s special rapporteur on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the only expert whose mandate is not time-limited.
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