Just finished watching NBC’s unedited interview with Donald Trump, which took place on July 8th in Trump Tower. I didn’t see the original interview on NBC but I doubt very seriously that it wasn’t edited to pieces. Trump just steamrolls this poor woman all through the interview (at one point even saying to her “I know, you’re sitting here like this great reporter and blah, blah, blah”), and then at around 26 1/2 minutes while they’re wrapping up she weakly tries to save face by telling him it’s fun when he zings her.
It’s an interesting interview in which Trump elucidates at least somewhat on how he’s going to win Latino support and get Mexico to pay for the wall. He speaks to how the media strove to find illegal immigrants working for him and couldn’t find any. He speaks to the fact that our own government doesn’t know how many illegal immigrants are here, and he shoots down slated media claims that crime rates are lower among the Latino population by pointing out those statistics refer to the legal population. He also talks about his views on jobs, gun control, various pundits and his opponents.
He speaks largely in generalities and there’s plenty of room for his opponents to go off like pop bottle rockets, but it was fun watching the guy in action. He has huge bags under his eyes and is probably exhausted (he’s reputed to sleep only 4 hours a night even when not running for president) but he’s still right there on top of everything Tur throws at him. Fun interview IMHO.
I wonder how long it will take the Genius Billionaire to realize that if you build a wall, people will go over it, under it, and sometimes right through it. If he truly wants complete control of a 2000 mile long border, the wall would have to be manned. And in that case, you wouldn’t really need a wall at all. Dumbass.
In the interview I saw (and now I need to take a long shower to get rid of all the accumulated bullshit) all Trump said on the first point was that he was going to ‘bring jobs back to the US’, without the slightest hint of how this might be accomplished, followed by the frankly rather insulting assertion that this mere statement alone would automatically get him Latino support, as if none of them have jobs now.
As for getting Mexico to pay for his idiotic wall, he seems to have no plan whatsoever except some unspecified exercise of his mad ninja negotiating skillz. Hey, maybe his plan is indiscriminate bombing of Mexican border cities until they pay up, sorta like how he plans to deal with ISIL. If so, I could see why he may want to be a bit coy about that one.
So, he is going to increase the number of jobs in the U.S., (making immigration from Mexico and Central America even more enticing), while compelling Mexico, already burdened by a troubled economy, to pay for it, reducing the availability of jobs in Mexico, making immigration to the U.S. even more enticing.
Even IF he actually had a plan, (utterly unspecified in his interview), to accomplish his intended goals, he believes that creating more incentives for immigration will reduce illegal immigration?
Odd.
How does he “know” that the crime statistics only apply to legal people? Does he think we simply throw away crime statistics if the accused perpetrator is not a legal resident?
So the solution to illegal immigration should be to wreck the economy and increase unemployment?
Trump made it pretty clear that due to the fact Mexico benefits enormously through trade with the U.S., it can be negotiated with to use some of those profits to pay for building the wall.
It should be noted too that under a more robust economy as Trump envisions it with him in the White House, Mexico would benefit even more through increased trade and mutual business activity. Thus the incentive would exist to persuade them through negotiation that financing the building of the wall would be in their best interest economically.
I don’t know that the statistics are thrown away, though I doubt it. A more likely result would be for the various city, state and perhaps federal government entities to simply stop keeping records as to which arrestees are here legally and which are not.
As far as how he knows the statistics only apply to legal people, he didn’t elaborate. But based on the fact that his claim has not thus far been debunked despite the fact that the media and most of his opponents are eagerly digging for anything and everything they can throw at him, I would assume the statement is correct.
You should re-evaluate this model of epistemology. Not only is it bad logic, you probably don’t consume enough non-partisan mediato be an accurate judge.
There was an episode of Penn and Teller’s Bullshit where they did this. They hired some, ummm, day laborers, from in front of a home improvement store. They built a section of wall to spec. Then they split up in to three two man teams - over, under, and through. There’s a saying about hot knives and butter.
The episode also pointed out one of the large contractors for the actual wall got an enormous fine for using illegal workers.
Seriously? You accuse tomndebb of wanting to tank the economy to remove the incentive for illegal immigrants, something he never said. And in the very next sentence you tout Trump’s plan to use trade as a bargaining chip with Mexico (the U.S.'s third largest trading partner); a plan which really could tank our economy.
Actually, the “solution” to illegal immigration, (if anyone really wanted to do it rather than having demagogues use it as a stalking horse to promote hatred in order to win votes, only to refrain from addressing the issue and using it again in the next election), would be to initiate something like a Marshall Plan throughout Central America to get those economies so improved that their people would find jobs at home and not look to find them here.
“Enormously” is a relative term and given the high costs that Mexico has to expend on the internal drug wars that are fueled by U.S. consumption, there is not nearly the random cash floating around for them to go out and build a wall that will just be riddled by tunnels in any event.
A more robust economy as Trump envisions it? This from a guy who keeps bankrupting his own companies and who has been unable to actually present a genuine plan to make the economy more robust?
So, basically, Trump appears to be blowing smoke and you are simply accepting his word without any evidence that he is not simply inventing his claim?
Now, none of these reports address his odd claim that illegal immigrant crimes are not recorded. However, most of them use figures such as the number of Mexican-born prisoners, (thus including both legal and illegal immigrants), and compare them to crime rates in the U.S. overall. Unless you are going to engage in some conspiracy theory that the government is suppressing the number of people who are criminals if they happen to be illegal immigrants, his claim is bullshit.