Thread: Prime-time Trump faces credibility crisis

Prime-time Trump faces credibility crisis

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 1:22 AM ET, Tue January 8, 2019

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump will face one huge obstacle when he appeals to Americans in a prime-time Oval Office address Tuesday to unite behind his crusade for a border wall: Himself.

Trump has spent years exploiting immigration -- one of the nation's most divisive fault lines -- during an insurgent campaign and a presidency sustained by the fervor of his committed political base.

But now, the downside of that strategy is becoming evident. In his attempt to convince the nation that a genuine crisis is unfolding at the southern border, the President's arguments face extreme skepticism from those not already in his camp.

About 57% of Americans oppose Trump's wall compared with 38% in favor, according to a December CNN poll conducted by SSRS. Those numbers are similar to where they were just after Trump took office in 2017.

On Tuesday night, Trump will commandeer the symbolic might of his office in an effort to bolster a political approach that has failed to force Democrats to cave to his demand for $5 billion in wall funding amid a government shutdown now in its third week.

He will hold forth on a deeply contentious issue from the spot where President Ronald Reagan eulogized the Challenger space shuttle crew and where other predecessors gave notice of the start or ends of wars.
The historically resonant stagecraft represents an attempt to convince the country -- with scant hard evidence -- that a real threat is unfolding on the frontier of the US and Mexico border, including drug trafficking, rising sickness among migrants, increasing border crossings and a busted asylum system.
"We honestly believe that we have a crisis at our southern border," Vice President Mike Pence said in a briefing at the White House Monday.

"I hope when you all -- not as reporters, but just also as fellow Americans -- look at these facts, you might be prepared, as other journalists have done, to recognize the same and communicate that to the country. "
Trump's capacity to make a similar argument is complicated by his choice not to broaden his support beyond his loyalist base in two years in office. And he's often used immigration as a cudgel to attack Democrats and moderate Republicans.

The address promises to be yet another extraordinary moment in a singular presidency. When news broke of his prime-time appearance, a remarkable debate broke out in Washington about whether the President of the United States can be trusted to tell the truth in an address to the nation.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer demanded the right of reply.

"Now that the television networks have decided to air the President's address, which if his past statements are any indication will be full of malice and misinformation, Democrats must immediately be given equal airtime," they said in a joint press release.

There are no details yet about who will deliver the response for the Democrats, but CNN will carry the response live.

Many Trump supporters do believe that the border is being besieged by criminals, is easily penetrated by drugs gangs and share his view that "without borders, we don't have a country."

And the President can clearly argue that he won election by promising to purge deep concern about a broken immigration system. At almost every rally, Trump beams as the crowd chants "build the wall, build the wall." The border issue has become an almost mystical symbol of Trump's appeal to his supporters.

But Trump has also stigmatized Mexicans and other immigrants and his dark vision of a nation under siege from hordes of invaders has turned a border security dispute into a political quarrel that tears at American cultural and racial divides.

The wall is just as powerful a metaphor for liberals, including Democratic leaders he now wants to fund the project after failing to get it built during two years of GOP control on Capitol Hill.

For Trump's critics, the wall is a metaphor for an inhumane and un-American approach to immigration that has seen undocumented migrant families separated and several detained children die of illnesses.

So, when the President seeks to corral public opinion behind him Tuesday, he will be operating on scorched political ground and will require something extraordinary to shift opinion.

That is especially the case since Trump's hardline rhetoric on immigration was seen by critics inside and outside of the GOP as a key factor in the party's loss of the House in the midterm elections.

The risk for Trump is that after the fire and fury of his relentless immigration rhetoric, anyone left who has an open mind simply will not believe him.

"I expect the President to lie to the American people," said New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee on Monday.

"Why do I expect this? Because he's been lying to the American people and his spokespeople continue lying to the American people," he said.

In the latest notorious case of the administration peddling untruths, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders was caught on Fox News implying falsely that up to 4,000 terrorists have poured over the southern border.

In an annual terrorism report published in July 2017, the State Department reported that there was "no credible information that any member of a terrorist group has traveled through Mexico to gain access to the United States."

Trump has claimed that a wall is needed to deter "drug dealers, human traffickers and criminals."
He also argued without evidence that a caravan of migrants from Central America that headed to the border last year included "unknown Middle Easterners" -- another reference to terrorism.

Such a record will complicate Trump's attempts and those of his key aides, such as Pence and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who are due on Capitol Hill Tuesday to sell his message before the President heads to the border on Thursday.

CNN's Kevin Liptak reported on Monday that Trump's decision to deliver a prime-time address followed warnings from advisers that his arguments about immigration -- delivered in tweets and impromptu media scrums in recent days -- are not resonating amid the shutdown.

But if Tuesday's speech is pockmarked with factual errors and easily discredited spin, any hope the President has of influencing anyone other than his supporters will likely be dashed.

The President's set piece speeches have rarely succeeded in changing public opinion on a key issue or easing tensions in a political standoff; in fact, the opposite is more often the case.

Trump's decision to trigger a shutdown, apparently fearing anger from conservative pundits if he folded over wall funding, left an impression that he is covering up his embarrassment over his so-far failed campaign promise.

Given his hyper political approach in the past, it's always possible that Trump has no expectation of changing the partisan brew over immigration, but just wants to show his supporters he's ready to fight.

Trump's most difficult assignment will be to make a case that the situation at the US-Mexico border really amounts to a genuine crisis.

Apprehensions of undocumented migrants coming across the border did rise by about 100,000 in the 2018 fiscal year to nearly 400,000. The administration has also warned of a rise in families crossing the border illegally. The numbers reached more than 51,000 families in October and November. But the figures are still nowhere near record-setting levels of up to 100,000 families a month in the early 2000s.

The number of asylum claims among migrants rose nearly 70% to almost 93,000 in fiscal year 2018 from the previous year. But 90% of those claims are not granted.

Nielsen told reporters at the Whi

But the White House's critics are more likely to put those failures down to the administration's draconian approach and mismanagement than to an outside crisis that truly threatens US national security.

CNN's Tammi Kuperman, Geneva Sands and Jim Acosta contributed to this article

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/08/polit...all/index.html

About 57% of Americans oppose Trump's wall compared with 38% in favor, according to a December CNN poll conducted by SSRS. Those numbers are similar to where they were just after Trump took office in 2017.

Why am I not surprised ..... CNN Poll. Let's do the same poll over and Fox and see what the numbers look like.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer demanded the right of reply.

"Now that the television networks have decided to air the President's address, which if his past statements are any indication will be full of malice and misinformation, Democrats must immediately be given equal airtime," they said in a joint press release.

I just posted the following on a similar thread:

Oh hell no. The President is both the head of state and head of government of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. Under Article II of the Constitution, the President is responsible for the execution and enforcement of the laws created by Congress.

With the position comes certain privileges. Included in those privileges is the right to address the nation without equal rebuttal from the same podium. Heck, this isn't a primary run for office or a competition! Affording Congresspersons the same stage and rebuttal time is demeaning to the office of President of the United States.

Well, that's the way I see it anyway.

Dear President Trump, please cancel the address tomorrow night, have a press conference at 9 am in the morning, declare victory against illegal immigration, and reopen the government.

Look at those numbers, 400,000 AFTER a big surge from the caravan business, and your levels of illegal immigration are the lowest in 30 years. Keep building wall bit by bit, take another $1.6 this year, build another 100 miles, another $1.6 next year, another 100 miles plus or minus, and maybe by the end of your first term, you'll have the 100 already built in San Diego, Yuma and the Rio Grande Valley Levee Wall and another one somewhere, the 115 mile stretch in Texas you just approved in Texas, plus another 200 miles between now and the end of 2020, and that is 415 plus or minus miles of new Steel Fence and ... fantastic!! Then use what you can through the military to counter illegal drug operations, another 200 miles perhaps to finish off the gaps and upgrade the other areas where needed, and while it may not be 100% sealed, it's going to be very sealed and sealed at high priority, high-traffic areas.

This is an issue that has to be dealt with quickly and quietly. That's how you have and will get the best results.

Opinion: Why President Trump won't lose in a long shutdown

Henry OlsenSpecial to The Washington Post
Jan. 3, 2019

We're into Day 13 of the partial government shutdown, and there's no end in sight. Common wisdom says the longer this lasts, the worse the politics will get for President Donald Trump.

I disagree.

Trump isn't likely to suffer politically because he's not doing anything his supporters find objectionable. A Quinnipiac poll last month found that 43 percent of Americans, including 86 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of independents, support building the wall. Support for the wall is so high among Trump supporters that even Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said this week that he supports it while blasting the president's character in a Washington Post commentary.

When your most prominent internal critic supports your position, you know you're dealing from strength.




Now that Democrats run the House, they will increasingly bear some political responsibility for ending the crisis. Americans generally want both sides to cut deals in the national interest, and that's likely to be as true in this case as in others. People didn't want the government to be shut down, but now that it is, they're likely to want a deal to get it back open.

That plays into Trump's hands — as long as he demonstrates that he's willing to deal, too.

There are pretty much only three ways this ends. The first — a Democratic cave-in — is unlikely, but it would be a big win if it happens.

The second, a deal that would give the president some funding for the wall, would be a win for Trump with his base — he fought and won.



But even the third, a Trump cave-in after a long holdout, should play well with his base, too.

Trump backers are likely to believe his argument that Democrats' intransigence shows they don't care about the border. If he holds out for a month or more, then gives in, only the most ferocious wall advocates will say he didn't keep his promise to fight for the wall. Ann Coulter might abandon Trump in that event, but almost none of his backers would follow her.

The common wisdom is right about one thing, though: This standoff won't help Trump expand his support. He had only a 45 percent job approval rating in a recent CNN poll. If he can't increase that to closer to 48 percent, he's going to have an extremely hard time winning reelection unless Democrats nominate someone who proves to be nearly as unpopular as Hillary Clinton.

Fighting for a wall opposed by virtually everyone who disapproves of him now is not the way to expand his support.

But that is in the future. Indeed, by fighting so publicly and strenuously for the wall now, Trump is building up chits with his base that he can cash if and when he makes a big move to expand his base later in the year.

So for Trump, a continued shutdown is a political win no matter what the outcome.
Expect the shutdown to go on for quite a while until House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., grow tired of the battle and move to shift the political war to a new battlefield.

Henry Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and author of "The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism ."

https://www.mcall.com/opinion/mc-opi...103-story.html

On Fox First this morning, two guests, one Dem, one Republican, when asked if they thought the President was going to declare a national emergency tonight, both said "yes". The military has a funded national emergency construction fund with $100 billion in it, plus there is another immigration emergency fund with $20 million in it.

That immigration emergency fund should NOT be used for more BEDS!

We want them put on buses and deported off our soil!

NO WAREHOUSING MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ON OUR BORDER AND NO RELEASING THEM IN OUR STREETS!

NO PAPERS, NO ENTRY, NO RIGHTS, NO ANCHOR BABY, NO DISEASES AND NO PUBLIC CHARGE!

Originally Posted by Judy

Dear President Trump, please cancel the address tomorrow night, have a press conference at 9 am in the morning, declare victory against illegal immigration, and reopen the government.

Look at those numbers, 400,000 AFTER a big surge from the caravan business, and your levels of illegal immigration are the lowest in 30 years. Keep building wall bit by bit, take another $1.6 this year, build another 100 miles, another $1.6 next year, another 100 miles plus or minus, and maybe by the end of your first term, you'll have the 100 already built in San Diego, Yuma and the Rio Grande Valley Levee Wall and another one somewhere, the 115 mile stretch in Texas you just approved in Texas, plus another 200 miles between now and the end of 2020, and that is 415 plus or minus miles of new Steel Fence and ... fantastic!! Then use what you can through the military to counter illegal drug operations, another 200 miles perhaps to finish off the gaps and upgrade the other areas where needed, and while it may not be 100% sealed, it's going to be very sealed and sealed at high priority, high-traffic areas.

This is an issue that has to be dealt with quickly and quietly. That's how you have and will get the best results.

Judy using CNN talking points.

Originally Posted by Beezer

That immigration emergency fund should NOT be used for more BEDS!

We want them put on buses and deported off our soil!

NO WAREHOUSING MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ON OUR BORDER AND NO RELEASING THEM IN OUR STREETS!

NO PAPERS, NO ENTRY, NO RIGHTS, NO ANCHOR BABY, NO DISEASES AND NO PUBLIC CHARGE!

I hear what you're saying and understand where you're coming from. However, we must process them and detain them until they can be officially deported. Until we can figure out a way to actually stop illegals from entering (a wall would certainly help), we must have adequate detention space. Just catching them and immediately shoving them back across the border offers no deterrence because they'll just be back in a day, two days, a week, or next month. They must be properly processed prior to deportation so we can criminally punish those who decide to become felons and return. It's vicious cycle that would be never ending if we just released them across the border as quick as we caught them.

Furthermore, there are laws in place that don't allow us to release citizens of other countries into Mexico. Bottom line for me, if ending catch & release means providing more detention space, I'm all for it. Heck, let's build the biggest tent city detention space the world has ever seen at our border if that's what it takes to stop catch & release. Of course I'm just talking about illegals that come here without children because, unfortunately, the law currently prevents us from detaining children for extended periods. That's another issue that must be fixed post haste.

We must find a way to stop them from entering in the first place and for those that do enter, we must figure out a way to speed up the deportation process. I don't have all of the answers, but we must figure out a way to accomplish these two things before we can get a solid handle on this atrocious situation.

Oh, and we must figure out a way to hold visa overstays more accountable. They must be pursued immediate upon the expiration date of their visa. For that I'm sure we need more ICE manpower and probably a better tracking system. After all, it is being said that we have just as many illegals in our country from visa overstays as we do those that illegally crossed the border.

Put them in a Stadium...process them, load on bus and get them out!