Throughout the week,
people have been wondering what's
up with that whole Joe Biden
raising the refugee cap thing like
he said he was going to do it.
He promised it multiple times.
And John Oliver had a great segment
on his show last week tonight
asking him for
him to actually do the thing that
he said he was going to do.
Lots of people started talking
about throughout the week,
on the Damage Report,
we did multiple segments on it.
And so we wanted clarification and
earlier today,
the Biden administration gave
that clarification at long last.
President Biden has decided not
to lift the cap on refugees for
the current fiscal year from
the level set by the Trump
administration, according to
a senior administration official.
Abandoning a previous proposal to
Congress to allow more refugees
to come to the United States.
Now, there is some breaking
news but
not necessarily clarifying news.
So we will get to that in a second
but I want to give you
the news that broke earlier today.
Starting with what we said,
in addition, he plans to keep
the refugee cap at 15,000.
That figure is a historic low set
by Donald Trump.
So it's not even one human
being more than what Donald Trump
would allow.
Earlier this year,
Biden had proposed to Congress
lifting the cap up to 62,500.
He has pledged to raise it to
125,000 for the following fiscal
year, which begins in October.
Now that might sound like
a huge increase, and
I guess it sort of is only because
of how much the cap has been
lowered over the past few years.
But it is very
much in line with just the normal
amounts of refugees that were
being brought in during the latter
years of the Obama administration.
On that 62,500 number, one of the
reporters for the Washington Post
noted on Twitter that that number
was actually a prorated figure for
a fiscal year that was half over.
An apples-to-apples comparison is
that Biden had already pledged 125.
And it has now decided to stick
with 15,000, which is
as she points out, a huge drop.
Now he is going to change the
regional allocation of refugees.
Under Trump's directive,
strict restrictions were placed on
accepting refugees on certain
African and
majority Muslim countries.
So sure the number might be
basically zero but
it'll be basically zero people
coming in from more countries.
[LAUGH] >> And many people,
I think quite reasonably,
lost it over this.
Because not only did he make
the promise during the campaign and
not only did he get goodwill by
promising to turn against something
that motivated a huge amount of
anti Trump sentiment.
But even very recently like during
the town hall he did a month ago,
he had this to say.
>> With me and us, Sarah Leone come
with me in the parts of Lebanon,
come with me around the world and
see people piled up in camps.
Kids dying, no way out,
refugees fleeing from persecution.
We, the United States,
used to do our part.
We were part of that.
Send me your huddled masses,
come on.
>> Now that might sound bad with
the news of today but
bear in mind he kept saying come
with me to those countries.
He didn't say then come back
to the United States,
just stay there I guess.
Now the press secretary did put out
a sort of statement,
saying the President's directive
today has been the subject of some
confusion.
Last week he sent the Congress'
budget for the fiscal year starting
October 2021,
which honors his commitment.
For the past few weeks he has been
consulting with his advisors to
determine what number of refugees
could realistically be admitted to
the United States between now and
October 1st.
Given the decimated refugee
admissions programme we inherited
and burns on the Office of
Refugee Resettlement, his initial
goal of 60,500 seems unlikely.
So it's all about Trump, blah,
blah, blah.
While finalizing that
determination, the President was
urged to take immediate action to
reverse the Trump policy that
banned refugees from many key
regions to enable flights from
those regions to begin within days.
Today's order did that.
With that done, we expect the
President to set a final increased
refugee cap for the remainder of
this fiscal year by May 15th.
Which look,
that was pitched as clarifying what
was already out there.
But it definitely doesn't just
do that.
This seems like someone
shifted into reverse and began then
just to hit the gas there.
And I hope this most recent update
is the final honest commitment to
raise it but
what do you both think?
>> All right, well, so
let's understand why we did this or
as Joe Biden would say come on.
>> [LAUGH] All right, so
number of Republican votes,
he'll get by keeping Trump's brutal
refugee camp, approximately zero,
none, none, none.
This is old 1990s way of
thinking triangulation,
I'm going to get Republican voters.
It barely worked back then.
And it certainly doesn't work now.
We're far too separated in our
different tribes for
Republicans to go, I love
the brutality of Donald Trump.
And Joe Biden gave me 5% of it, so
I'm going to vote for him instead
of the next brutal Republican.
It ain't going to happen.
So going an inch right wing is
almost completely pointless.
Yeah, there's some shades of
independence in some suburbs, etc.
But you're much better of, turning
out your base, than trying to get
seven Republicans in the suburbs,
right?
But they never understood that,
by the way, Biden barely won this
election here, 43,000 votes in
three States made the difference.
So it's not like well Biden won on
election so he must be a genius.
No, he almost lost to Trump, okay?
So now why is he doing it?
It is because of triangulation and
it's because of,
this is really important,
the media and pressure.
So why do you think we're having
a conversation
about immigration and refugees?
Because the right wing said crisis
at the border, crisis at
the border, there's too many
immigrants in the country, right?
And then all the media picked it up
and then Jen Psaki kept getting
asked about it in the White House
press conferences and
then next thing you know,
it's old Fox News trick.
They talked about it enough,
then CNN and
MSNBC started talking about it, and
they feel they need to react.
Now that's the giant pushback from
the right wing.
And from the left wing we got as
usual the sound of silence, right?
So since there was no pushback from
the left, he's like, well,
I got these guys locked up.
And they're totally veal pen,
they're not going to criticize me
ever on anything.
So I might as well just start
heading right wing, right?
And if you're
old school politician,
that makes a lot of sense, right?
That is why you need to create
pressure from the left.
Now, the good news on this is,
after we made this announcement,
instantly there was pressure from
the left.
So ANC, Ilan Omar and others,
thank you,
stepped up to the plate and took on
Biden very aggressively on this.
>> Yeah Cenk, I completely
agree with you.
I think that this is an attempt by
the Biden administration to
sort of appease conservatives, but
I don't think that that's ever
going to happen.
I think this was a promise that he
ran on and that people voted for
him in a pandemic, might I add,
based on this promise.
And so I think he would be much
smarter to really play to the
people who turned out their vote.
Many of whom are black and brown,
both black and brown women, who did
the work of going out to vote and
getting their communities to vote.
I don't want to see Biden trying
to kowtow to conservatives and
republicans just to sort
of try to kind of woo their votes.
I don't think it works that way.
I think he's completely
wasting his time, and selling out
the people who actually voted for
him at the same time.
>> Yeah, and look,
we will have to keep watching this
to see what they end up doing.
I've been looking at the press
secretary's Twitter account,
and it's a whole bunch of, god,
why are you all freaking out?
We got all these steps plan, we're
going to do all this great stuff.
Okay, well then tell that to all of
the sources inside of
the administration that have spent
the last week saying that Biden's
terrified of political pressure and
all of this.
It's senior administration
officials, sure,
they could be totally making it up.
It seems more likely that they're
backpedaling.
And I want this to potentially
serve as a lesson to our audience
who needs it less than pretty much
anyone else.
There was this,
you can see it in the headlines.
There's this belief that well,
Kayleigh McEnany was
a massive liar.
But now we've got
a woman of perfect virtue who would
never tell us a mistruth or
anything like that.
And god, look at the sucky bombs,
they're awesome and all of that.
Now she's the press secretary,
she's a professional liar.
She might lie a little bit less
egregiously than Kayleigh McEnany,
it would be difficult not to.
That said, she is covering for
Biden, that's it.
And sure, in this case, maybe the
end result is good, but we need to
have an adversarial relationship.
In this case, it seems like
the adversarial relationship is
the only thing that's going to
result in more refugees
actually coming to this country.
But now we need to apply the lesson
of this to having Biden actually
acknowledging the blockade in
Yemen.
Actually making good on
his promises around student loan,
debt cancellation,
a ton of other things like that.
So hopefully this isn't the only
instance where there will be
a strong enough reaction to provoke
him to actually make good
on his promises.
>> Yeah, John I just want to
say last couple of things here.
One, I want to back up what you're
saying about the White House
spokespeople in 100%.
They lie and
the media pretends like they're all
incredible truth tellers.
It's absurd.
It's a kabuki theatre that
they play.
Jay Carney who used to be Obama's
press secretary, then he went to
work for Amazon and he recently put
out statements saying
that I pretended that Amazon's more
progressive than Bernie Sanders.
And that he's for
a higher minimum wage.
Well, you had eight years during
the Obama administration to push
for a higher minimum wage and
you never did.
So yeah, of course, I mean,
too bad the nature of that job is
you've got to lie at
least a little but often a lot.
And so now in terms of the comment
you made about Brian's panic,
I think
that's the most important one.
Because he's panicked about
the reaction he's seen in
the media and the pushback he's
getting from the right wing, okay?
Now what does that tell for
you on the left wing?
That you should do likewise.
That that is how power is wielded,
that is how you have leverage, and
they don't respect you if
you just sit there and go yes sir.
Absolutely sir, anything you want,
sir, that means they ignore you.
But if you create trouble for them,
and on the left we can create
good trouble,
then they've got to respond.
I'm going to give the last word
to one of our viewers here.
You're in the members section,
sometimes we read your comments in
the middle of a story,
TYT.com/join to join.
Colorado blue blazer regular is
a little bit more skeptical than
we are and wrote in,
I wish my thesis was incorrect.
But once again,
it seems to be proven.
Republicans initiate violent
punitive policies.
Democratic administration has
come in to normalize those wild
policies.
>> I will try to keep it brief but
we can see that in a million
different ways, even like the
erasing of the corporate tax rate.
Taking it down from 35 to 21 is
insane, taking it back up not even
the whole way.
Well, now responsible people
are in charge.