CBS News’ Margaret Brennan (or her producers on “Face The Nation”) appears to have concocted a game plan ahead of sitting down on Sunday with several Republican guests, including incoming Trump border czar Tom Homan.
But it failed miserably. Let’s back up a little before getting to that, though.
Homan has more than held his own since President-elect Trump announced his nomination after the election, speaking in clear and no-nonsense language about what the administration plans to do about the border crisis and the millions of illegal aliens scattered across the country during Biden’s disastrous four years in the White House.
In one interview with NewsMax just before New Year’s, Homan easily demolished Democrat Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s verbal attack on his credibility, which she threw out during a cozy interview on an MSNBC program.
Tough Enough:
During this week’s “Face The Nation,” Brennan’s questioning strategy seemed to be discrediting the incoming president’s promise to implement mass deportations and restore the integrity of the southern border. Here was one stab at that goal during Homan’s interview: [emphasis mine]
Homan directed the conversation to the Biden administration, which took action earlier this year to limit the number of asylum-seekers entering the country through the U.S.-Mexico border. Homan argued that 80 percent of the Biden administration’s deportation numbers are from Border Patrol arrests that were moved back across the southern border.
“They weren’t interior enforcement arrests,” he said, adding the Biden administration is “playing a numbers game.”
Here was Brennan’s talking point in response: Biden had more deportations than during Trump’s first term. Homan pointed out why the fudged numbers don’t add up to what Trump succeeded in doing:
You can compare the number of deportations under Trump versus Biden. When you consider a 45-year low in crossings, the number of deportations [is] going to be lower because we don’t have that population to process and deport.
In other words, Brennan’s gotcha question on whether Donald Trump will actually deport the number of people he has promised accidentally gave Homan an opening to lay into Biden’s disastrous failures on the border. As he masterfully said, so that even a child could understand it, of course Trump’s numbers are lower–he did not allow in the millions that Biden and DHS Secretary Mayorkas have. He also reminded the host that ICE could do its great work much more efficiently, if the sanctuary cities would work with them.
Brennan also concern-trolled about Trump’s ability to deport violent criminals back to their home countries, if their leaders refuse to accept them:
Homan disposed of that quickly, saying that Trump’s been there, done that–and he’s already gotten some grudging foreign leaders to walk back their pushback in recent weeks.
As we wrote earlier, new Senate Majority Leader John Thune of North Dakota spoke with the host about the prospects of Trump Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth getting confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
The Rumor Mill Keeps Grinding: Sources: GOP Senate Leader Gives Trump Status Report on Hegseth Nom
In a separate part of the interview, Brennan again attempted to trip up a Republican with some fancy footwork about Trump and immigration–and fell on her face.
This brief excerpt reveals what happened:
KRISTEN WELKER: When I spoke with President-elect Donald Trump, he said that his mass deportation plan was his top priority. He wants to deport everyone who is here illegally. Do you support that plan to deport everyone who is here illegally?
SEN. JOHN THUNE: Well, I think there are certain – certainly there are categories, people who’ve committed crimes. There are over a million people that the current administration had targeted for deportation. And so I think that we have to take seriously the fact that there are a lot of people in this country today, over 10 million, who’ve come in just in the last four years under this administration’s policies, many of whom are not here for good reasons. I mean, we know we’ve apprehended almost 300 people at the southern border that are on the terrorist watch list. And you’ve got criminals, and cartel members, and gang members, and all of the above.
Absolutely right, and this is how the GOP needs to go around far-left word games in the media. If Republican Senate leadership, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and those Trump plans to surround himself with in the White House remain singing from the same hymnal–especially in the tough fights ahead–the country might have a chance to remain the tattered border and our national sovereignty.
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