Timex
3367
Ashley Parker’s on that byline… She’s no hack.
Maybe there’s actually something worth reporting here, even if folks may not like to hear about it.
Menzo
3368
It’s a situation that needs to be addressed. We can’t let everyone who’s not a drug dealer in Central America into the country. But I don’t know what the answer is. It is legal to come to the border and seek asylum in America.
I mean, we could let everyone who’s not a drug dealer in Central America into the country. If we weren’t callous cowards :)
Current trajectory has the numbers about the same as in 2006.
But you know if Republicans are outraged, then the media has to pretend to believe them and report accordingly.
Humane treatment for asylum seekers? JFC what kind of country is this anyway? Bring back trump and Miller!
/s
RayRayK
3371
Completely agree with this, neither is Nick Miroff.
And just maybe the reporting should provide context and inform the public about the issue instead of yet again promulgating rightwing xenophobic talking points. Alas.
I don’t expect anyone to actually read any of these links but /shrug.
[Depending on what day it is, the Post says it’s either a “crisis” that Biden has “failed” to deal with — or a regular cyclical occurrence]
^^
Observations on the press conference and the broken beltway media.
Quoted at length.
There were no questions about any element of the Covid crisis – not the vaccine, the prognosis, the economy, nothing! – although it’s by far the most important issue on any normal person’s mind right now. There were no questions about the substance of Biden’s ambitious plans related to infrastructure and climate change, immigration and voting rights.
White House reporters should be tough on the president – on every president. But that doesn’t mean asking questions based on their own obsessions or right-wing talking points. It means coming at the president with tough questions on behalf of the American public. It means pushing him to govern better, more humanely, and more transparently.
There were several contentious questions about the situation at the border, which the right-wing is intent on turning into a cause for hysteria — with the mainstream media’s collaboration. The first border question, from PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor, contained such a false and loaded assumption – direct from far-right talking points – that Biden actually fact-checked it.
That’s right, after four years of the media desperately needing to fact-check the president (and often failing), now the president has to fact-check the media.
Alcindor told Biden that “the perception of you, that got you elected as a moral, decent man, is the reason why a lot of immigrants are coming to this country and trusting you with unaccompanied minors.”
Biden corrected her, explaining that it was largely a continuation of normal trends. “Does anybody suggest that there was a 31 percent increase under Trump because he was a nice guy, and he was doing good things at the border? That’s not the reason they’re coming.”
And NBC’s Kristin Welker suggested that Biden’s decision to roll back Trump executive orders “too quickly” worsened the situation at the border — leading Biden to correct her, as well.
“All the policies that were underway were not helping at all, did not slow up the amount of immigration,” he said. “And rolling back the policies of separating children from their mothers? I make no apology for that. Rolling back the policies of ‘Remaining in Mexico,’ sitting on the edge of the Rio Grande in a muddy circumstance with not enough to eat? I make no apologies for that. I make no apologies for ending programs that did not exist before Trump became president that have an incredibly negative impact on the law, international law, as well as on human dignity. And so I make no apologies for that.”
After four years of the media desperately needing to reality-check the president (and often failing), now the president was the one talking about things that mattered and marveling at not one but two reporters asking about the 2024 election. “Look, I don’t know where you guys come from,” he told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins.
Timex
3374
The idea that Biden should never hold another press conference is a terrible take.
And really, we SHOULD be hammering Biden for things like not allowing the press to observe and report on the state in those detention facilities. We would have (and did) complain about Trump doing that crap.
If we were six months into the Biden Administration I might tend to agree with this statement, but we are barely 60 days in. Does anyone honestly think that in 60 days any Administration could take the ridiculous mess that was inherited at our border and turn it around? That would be a pipe dream even if we weren’t also dealing with COVID vaccines, stimulus bills, filling huge gaps in departmental leadership, an assault on voter rights and the dozens of other landmines the previous administration left in Biden’s path (and the dozens more the GOP is feverishly laying as we speak).
The question nobody is asking is “Why are Republicans suddenly so concerned with our southern border again?” and the answer is simple, “Because it’s an easy way to lay a Trump failure at the feet of the Biden Administration” and the GOP is desperate for something, anything that they can point at and cry “failure!” to take away from the incredibly popular successes Biden has had with vaccinations and COVID relief in his first 60 days. Remember kids in cages? Remember the migrant caravans? Remember separating families and the surges in refugees from collapsing South American countries? All that shit happened under Trump’s watch. We didn’t go to sleep on January 20th with a couple hundred refugees in detainment at the border and then wake up January 21st to see 100,000 new people staring at America from across the Rio Grande.
Why doesn’t the Biden Administration allow media to tour any facility they want? Because the majority of them are still in the same condition they were during the Trump Administration, overcrowded, under-supplied, under-staffed and struggling to keep their heads above water. They did allow the media to tour the new facility because that facility represents the eventual goal, but it’s going to take far longer than 60 days to get anywhere even close to that goal. Allowing the press to show border facilities and conditions that deteriorated steadily throughout the Trump Administration is exactly what Republicans want, as it allows them to say “See! Look how awful this is under Joe Biden!” and just like that one of Trump’s biggest failures gets completely pawned off onto the Biden Administration as their failure.
The press should know this as well, but they are either too stupid or more likely too invested in creating partisan conflict to generate profit to realize that they are playing right into Republican hands. Meanwhile. in Georgia and elsewhere, American citizens are having their right to vote taken away from them by their own elected officials, and the press remains silent, doggedly focused on the “crisis” at the border while more than one actual crisis occurs right under their noses.
Timex
3376
While I understand the practical political calculus you’re describing here, at the same time I feel like the American people do in fact have a right to see what is happening in our country’s name, even if it was done by the guy before Biden.
Preventing our press from covering things that are actively happening, right now, because it might look bad politically, is not something I can get behind, and I say that as someone who definitely does support Biden and think he’s doing a good job.
Sharpe
3377
I think Biden needs a better strategy: allow the tours, show the reality, but also get the message out that these situations were created/exacerbated by Trump, and that to fix the situations we need X, Y, and Z and also have proposals out there to do X, Y, Z. For example, we clearly need more processing / housing capacity so let’s have proposals for the money for that ASAP. We also need to speed up the process vastly (an average 3 year wait to process an application for asylum is ree-fucking-donkulous) which is going to require changes in the law, changes in the administrative processing system, and money (everything takes money).
So I believe that Biden should have a strategy of disclosure accompanied by “this is how to fix it and what we need to do” and keep hammering away on the message. That’s vastly better IMO than trying to hide it. Hiding this sort of thing almost always leads to bad consequences, politically and/or in terms of human impact.
In a more informed world I would agree, but I think you guys are massively overestimating the reasoning ability and attention span of the average American voter and underestimating the ability of the GOP/Fox to influence narrative. It doesn’t matter how often you repeat that the conditions in these detention centers are the same as when Trump was in charge, or how often you point out that we’re working to make them better, the average American will see images of poor conditions shot today and say “Why doesn’t Joe Biden fix this?” and “How could Joe Biden have let it get this bad?”. Trump’s responsibility for the whole mess will be conveniently forgotten.
Nobody is suggesting the Biden Administration keep reporters out of detention centers indefinitely. It is obvious the Administration is addressing the situation, and they’ve said as much several times in several different ways, it’s just going to take time. In another 60 days they should have many more new facilities in place, and they can let media tour each one as it comes online. That coupled with constant reiteration that “we’re working around the clock to clean up the mess we inherited at the border” should be enough to deflect the GOP attacks while actually getting things done, and Americans like it when things get done.
On principal, I agree with Timex and Sharpe. As practical matter I agree with you. You only have one chance to make a first impression. Right now with the surge, which appears to be somewhat seasonal, coupled with with the lack of priority of having good living condition from the previous administration, I am sure the conditions are awful. The images will stay with the American people and even if conditions are improved in 3 or 6 months times, the first impression will be all important.
So I’m fine with stonewalling a bit to fix things as you propose. The reality is that between cellphone cameras, resourceful press, and Congressional Republican who are a lot harder to keep out than the press, we will get pictures soon enough. I think 60 days is a long as the administration will be able to keep them out, and they should plan on having tours in 30 days.
Meanwhile, in the world that actually exists
(where the corpse of irony has been abused into an unrecognizable pile of… something).
On our android TV, YouTube has almost no controls over the content it spits out at you (very few “don’t show me this channel” options.) Their news section earlier featured wall to wall videos from the “Forbes Breaking News” channel. Here’s a sampling (incognito on Chrome on my PC to get the screen caps.) The percentage of voters who think immigration is a larger issue than climate change can I think be directly attributable to media coverage.
(That these complete GOP fucks are immune from shame and hypocrisy is of little consequence to the low information voter, of which we have millions. )
All streams of stupidity eventually converge in today’s world.
So. I just found out the Ever Green’s call sign is H3RC.
QAnon discovered this innocuous fact.
Sadly, the containers on board were NOT opened on live TV to reveal the trafficked people imprisoned within.
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s international crime spree continues unopposed.
At least according to USA Today (NOTE: not the crime spree part).
KevinC
3383
Oh dear lord. I can’t even make up stuff this dumb and I’m really good at coming up with dumb shit.
Does it not use your account settings? You could tell it not to show you them on a PC and it should carry over.
That notorious criminal Hillathree Rodham Clinton.
Timex
3386
This should be her rap name.
