They're increasingly from the Tea Party on.
They're voting on race.
They're voting on this idea of an invasion of brown people over the border.
They're just voting specifically on racial animus.
At this stage, it isn't about economics, no.
Which is why Trump killed the immigration bill.
Correct? That's why.
Because otherwise he can't run against the other.
And brown people and people who don't look like him.
I mean, if you look at some of these exit polls, I mean, I live in Virginia.
Immigration was the number one issue.
I mean, again, these could change in in Virginia.
Virginia does have a border with West Virginia.
It's very, very contested area. Build the wall.
As Super Tuesday election results trickled in last night,
the liberal media intelligentsia provided a case study of what denial looks like.
Don't be fooled by the ladies of MSNBC joining forces to jovially mock voters
who expressed concern about the migrant crisis.
Because if one looks closely enough, you can see that.
Whoa, Jack mask slipping.
I suspect they're actually panicking about the vulnerabilities
of the Democratic Party as we barrel toward the general election.
They absolutely should be panicking.
By the way, unfortunately, instead of hearing voters out, the women of MSNBC
have chosen ignorance and denial instead.
Every election cycle when there is, particularly when there's
a Democratic incumbent, we get reminded about the borders,
and the borders become a thing again.
And then if there's a Republican in office, we don't think about them anymore.
It's it's the deficit and the border. Like, you make these things an issue.
You make them into boogeyman.
You make them into something that grabs you from under the bed at night
as soon as you wake up, as long as there's a Democratic incumbent
to blame on it, you make sure that nothing's ever done to fix either.
And then you hope that people stop talking about them once you've got a Republican.
Now, look, I'm sure that there have been many examples of political opponents
to Democrats exaggerating claims of immigration, but this ain't it.
There's very clearly a migrant crisis.
In December alone, 300,000 people crossed the border in just one month.
And there are local communities who have been really struggling to appropriately
respond to the influx of migrants who have arrived into their cities
and look for viewers who have convinced themselves that the denial demonstrated
by the gaggle of gals on MSNBC, is in no way indicative of progressives.
I have unfortunate news for you.
The idea that Republicans, in order to win an election, say we need
to hermetically seal the border
when they know that that would be that is
economic self-sabotage to the US economy.
And they are saying, let's let's do it anyway, while ginning up this, this
false narrative about this being a crisis.
And there is not only no moral calculation,
there is no economic calculation, there is no logical calculation,
there is only a political calculation.
And that political calculation is we are going to keep whining about it.
We are going to keep pretending this is a crisis.
Pretending that this is a crisis.
Look, I'm sad to say that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is wrong.
What's really unsettling is that she should know there's a migrant crisis.
After all, she represents a district in New York where local officials
have struggled to find shelter for the 171,000 plus migrants
who arrived in the city recently.
AOC herself addressed the migrant crisis just last September in front
of the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City.
Now, you tell me if this doesn't look like a crisis to you.
Increased federal resources to cities and municipalities dealing with this issue.
The second is to allow for work authorizations so that the folks
in here can get to work and start supporting themselves as soon as possible.
- They are prevented. - From getting jobs.
They are prevented from employment, and that is part of the strain
on our public systems.
Yet barriers for hope for all, for us, for the United States.
Now you come down.
You're completely destroying our city. You come down, you old breaker.
You gotta go to sleep at night. Ain't closing his division.
Come here. It's all for you to you motherfucker.
How is that?
We might have millions of people watching this show, but you can be
the difference maker, because we just need 1% of our audience to be paid members.
And then this show can be around forever, so you can make that difference.
Click join.
Now, look, I'm sure the angry individuals in that video will just be brushed off
as deranged right wing lunatics who were sent there to harass AOC
and give the false impression, of course, that people are worked up
about our broken immigration system.
Right? If you think that you're also wrong.
But that's okay, because anecdotal evidence
is oftentimes extremely misleading.
So let's actually take a step back and take a broader look
at broad public opinion.
In New York, for example, a Quinnipiac University poll just last September
found that 62% of voters said that they agreed with New York City Mayor
Eric Adams statement from September, where he said that an influx of migrants
will destroy the city.
I really hate the framing of that question, because it makes it seem like
there's something inherently negative or nefarious about migrants,
and there just isn't.
Most of these people came to America to work hard and build better lives
for themselves and their families.
That takes tenacity, resilience, and the willingness to take risks that I admire.
I'll always feel deep gratitude for having the privilege
of growing up in Reseda, California, a community where the majority of
residents consisted of Latino immigrants.
They've enriched my life.
I'm a child of immigrants myself, and we are a nation of immigrants.
It's important to remember that, however, our immigration system is
absolutely broken, and there are loopholes in our laws that human traffickers,
unfortunately, are well versed in.
These loopholes allow for the unmanageable influx of migrants into the country.
At a time when we don't have enough judges to process asylum claims.
And this also comes at a time when we clearly have a shortage
of housing for American citizens.
According to that same Quinnipiac poll, a whopping 85% of New York City voters
are either very concerned or somewhat concerned that the city will not be able
to accommodate the surge in migrants who have sought sanctuary in the city.
And they're right to worry.
The federal government has sent the city some resources, but hundreds of millions
of dollars apparently ain't enough.
New York City has received about $140 million in federal funding for shelters,
which is more than any other city not on the southwest border.
The white House told New York Governor Kathy Hochul in August that it cannot
send more federal assistance to the state, blaming congressional hurdles
for the inability.
So New York is left to pick up the tab.
And it ain't cheap, as local leaders in Denver have recently learned.
Here's mayor Mike Johnson laying out some tough budgetary sacrifices
Denver had to make recently to accommodate their growing migrant population.
We are announcing today, we will make some changes both to our services at DMV
and to our services on Parks and Rec.
What that looks like for DMV is we are no longer,
taking vehicle registrations in person.
We will move those to online.
We will start rotating weekly DMV closures starting on March 4th.
Our central spot at Tremont will stay open permanently, but our other satellite spots
will rotate, closing one week at a time.
We will have folks that are hourly workers that will have fewer hours.
If we reduce your hours and you're an on call worker, that's true.
We will have on call workers we won't hire for the summer
we would have hired otherwise.
We will also have to make some hard decisions
around reducing services for Parks and Rec heading into this summer and spring.
That means beginning February 20th, we will reduce hours at our rec centers,
our regional centers that are seven days.
We'll come back to six days.
Those sites that are six days will stay at six days, but we'll reduce hours.
We are planning for the entire 2024 budget.
So we believe we have to make it through this entire year.
And so these these changes will be in effect until we can get back
to a balanced budget.
- We think it will take us to 2024 year. - Not good.
I think we can all agree that economic instability and growing wealth inequality
has led to growing rage in America.
I certainly feel it.
So when Americans start seeing cuts to programs in their communities
to house migrants instead, honestly, I can understand their frustration,
even if it doesn't always manifest in the healthiest ways.
Tensions have been simmering within the black community.
In Chicago, for instance, much of their fury has been directed at
progressive Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has mostly responded to the crisis by being
as welcoming to migrants as he can be.
The kindness has been costly to both the city and his political career.
In an attempt to be transparent with voters in Chicago and Illinois,
the Comptroller's Office for the State of Illinois has published a website
that discloses the total amount spent on the migrant crisis by taxpayers.
So if you take a look at this, this is from the website itself,
from November 1st of last year to March 5th of this year, state expenditures
totaled more than $31,200,000.
It's a lot of money.
It's also just the tip of the iceberg. The governor, J.B.
Pritzker, has pledged around $182 million in state funds for Chicago, while Cook
County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has committed up to $70 million more
in a joint funding plan to ensure migrants sent to the city from Texas have access
to wraparound services and health care.
Those funds come on top of the state committing 160 million in November
to undocumented immigrants for welcome, shelter and independence.
That commitment was in addition to $478 million the state has spent
since the start of the response, according to the governor's office.
And obviously, those funds include both the state's resources and some of the
federal money that's been sent to Illinois to grapple with the migrant crisis.
Now, look, this crisis has shifted the politics of longtime Democratic
community activists in Chicago, including a woman by the name of Kata
Truss, who filed a lawsuit against Chicago over the migrant crisis.
I certainly don't want to demonize the migrants, because not
a lot of what is happening is their fault.
I think that our mayor, our governor, as well as President Biden
has to step in and make some changes to what is happening right now.
Right now, it seems as if our borders are just open
and that people are freely coming in and that there are no laws that are,
being followed in terms of immigration.
Now, when you talk about the black communities here in the city of Chicago
and you talk about the years of disinvestment in our communities,
in our schools and all around us, and you see this amount of money
being spent to people who have come from outside of this country.
That is a problem for us at a time where we're seeing increased crime
because our children don't have things to do, they don't have jobs.
And we're seeing this money being spent, and it's being spent
on other people in communities that could really benefit for that money.
That interview was on MSNBC, by the way.
Apparently the women over at MSNBC, who were part of that panel
that we showed you at the beginning of this segment, missed it.
Now, while Truss had been a Democrat her entire life and even donated money
to Chicago's progressive mayor Brandon Johnson, the migrant crisis has had
a significant impact on her politics.
Qatar.
Why are you going to vote Republican for the first time ever?
It's simple.
The Democratic Party has failed us here in Chicago.
Our local government as well as our state government, and even our president,
has made our migrants a priority over American citizens.
And so we have to stand up, and we have to let them know that it is unacceptable.
We have to let them know that you're not going to continue to depend on our vote.
You know, Chicago is a Democratic stronghold, and we've been
that way for years, and we are allowing our elected officials to mistreat us.
I am excited about being able to vote Republican for the first time.
So for all the pundits out there who can't understand how someone like Donald Trump
has managed to increase his support among African American voters in this country,
please just listen to the voters and take what they're saying at face value instead
of assuming all sorts of things about them, including allegations of racism
or hatred and bigotry in their hearts.
In fact, as Joy Reid want to smear this woman as a racist,
and does AOC think it's smart politics to deny Truss's lived experience?
Because I can recall progressives upholding lived experiences
as declarative statements about the world around us, that that is,
until it was inconvenient to do so.
The fact is that the migrant crisis is not some made up issue, and the left
sounds laughably out of touch when they claim it is telling Americans that they're
just gullible voters who bought into a made up right wing narrative is insulting,
and demonstrates a level of arrogance that honestly makes me pretty sick.
Maybe have a little faith in what voters are saying and listen to them.
This is politics.
You have to meet them where they are, not where you think they should be.
Progressives in Congress used to understand this.
In fact, just listen to Senator Bernie Sanders address the notion of open borders
while speaking to Ezra Klein back in 2015.
Think. Open borders.
Open borders.
That's a Koch brothers proposal. The idea, of course.
I mean, that's a right wing proposal which says essentially
there is no United States but anybody.
It would make the global poor richer, wouldn't it?
Going to make everybody in America poorer.
Then you're doing away with with the concept of a nation state.
And I don't think there's any country in the world which believes in that.
I think we have to raise wages in this country.
I think we have to do everything that we can to create the millions of jobs.
You think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low wage workers?
What do you think?
Maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids.
So I think from a moral responsibility, we've got to do work with the rest
of the industrialized world to, to address the problems of international poverty.
But you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer.
Bernie was right.
And honestly, I oftentimes wonder what happened to that brand of progressivism.
The Koch brothers actually do love looser immigration laws,
as do many private corporations looking for cheap migrant labor.
Speaking of which, in the first 11 months
of 2023, at least 2,953,676 migrants
crossed either of the United States southwestern or northern borders,
according to CBP data.
You can interpret that figure how you'd like, but I can't help but think about how
this impacts the leverage American workers have had during this tight labor market.
Since there weren't enough workers that leverage translated to higher wages
and better benefits for Americans.
With a massive flow of migrants coming in, and with lawmakers like AOC demanding that
they receive expedited worker permits.
It seems naive to think that leverage American workers currently have
will exist in the near future.
Finally, let's clearly identify what the left accomplishes
when they deny the existence of difficult issues in the country, like crime.
They forfeit an opportunity in shaping the response to it.
They create a vacuum in which legislation is crafted by their ideological opponents.
Denial of reality is dumb politics, and it makes the left look weak
and void of solutions.