CIRCUS COMES TO MIAMI!

By Laurie Kellman

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sixty seconds for answers, a television audience of millions and, for some candidates, a first chance to introduce themselves to voters.

The back-to-back Democratic presidential debates beginning Wednesday are exercises in competitive sound bites featuring 20 candidates hoping to oust President Donald Trump in 2020. The hopefuls range widely in age, sex and backgrounds and include a former vice president, six women and a pair of mayors.

The challenge: Convey their plans for the nation, throw a few elbows and sharpen what’s been a blur of a race so far for many Americans.

What to watch Wednesday at 9 p.m. Eastern on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo:

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WHAT’S HER PLAN?

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s task is to harness the recent momentum surrounding her campaign to prove to voters that she has what it takes to defeat Trump. As the sole top-tier candidate on stage Wednesday, she could have the most to lose.

The Massachusetts senator and former Harvard professor is known for her many policy plans and a mastery of classical, orderly debate. But presidential showdowns can be more “Gladiator”-style than the high-minded “Great Debaters.” This is no time for a wonky multipoint case for “Medicare for All,” student debt relief or the Green New Deal.

So, one challenge for Warren, 70, is stylistic. Look for her to try to champion her progressive ideas — and fend off attacks from lesser-known candidates — with gravitas, warmth and the brevity required by the format.

“Preparing for the debates is trying to learn to speak in 60 seconds or less,” she said in Miami, ahead of a visit she live-streamed to a migrant detention center in Homestead, Florida.

Another obstacle is to do so without alienating moderates any Democrat would need in a general election against Trump.

Being the front-runner on stage conveys a possible advantage: If the others pile on Warren, she gets more time to speak because the candidates are allowed 30 extra seconds for responses.

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WHO’S THAT?

There may be some familiar faces across the rest of the stage, such as New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, 50, or former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, 46. But a few names probably won’t ring any bells at all.

These virtual strangers to most Americans may be enjoying their first — and maybe last — turn on the national stage, so they have the least to lose.

Take John Delaney, 56, a former member of the House from Maryland. Look for him to try to make an impression by keeping up his criticism of Warren’s plans.

Or Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, 45, who sits on the powerful House Appropriations Committee. He has likened the Democratic primary to “speed dating with the American people.”

BREAKING OUT, GOING VIRAL

For several of the candidates onstage Wednesday, the forum is about finding the breakout moment — a zinger, a burn — that stays in viewers’ minds, is built for social media and generates donations, the lifeblood of campaigns.

In 2015, Carly Fiorina won applause and a short surge for her response to Trump, who had been quoted in Rolling Stone as criticizing Fiorina’s face.

“Look at that face,” Trump was quoted as saying. “Would anyone vote for that?”

Asked on CNN to respond, Fiorina evenly replied: “I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said.”

For candidates such as O’Rourke, a breakthrough moment on Wednesday is critical to revitalizing a campaign that has faded. The 10 White House contenders have two hours on stage that night and up until the curtain rises on the star-studded second debate the next day to make their mark. Former Vice President Joe Biden, 76, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, 77, headline Thursday’s debate and are certain to take up much of the spotlight.

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BREAKING OUT BADLY

An “oops” moment can be politically crippling to any presidential campaign.

Just ask Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the former Texas governor who, in a 2011 debate, blanked on the third agency of government he had said would be “gone” if he became president.

“Commerce, Education and the, uh, what’s the third one there?” Perry said.

“EPA?” fellow Republican Ron Paul offered. Yep, Perry said, the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Oops,” he finished. Perry’s campaign, already struggling, never recovered.

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WHAT ISSUES?

There’s simply no time for an in-depth discussion of issues. But the migrant crisis would be an apt topic, even in shorthand. Dominating the news in the hours before the showdown were vivid reports and images of the toll of the administration’s policy on children, especially.

Expect at least a mention, or perhaps the appearance, of a bracing photo of the bodies of a migrant father and his 23-month-old daughter face-down along the Rio Grande.

In addition to Warren, other candidates, such as Sen. Amy Klobuchar, were visiting the migrant center.

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TRUMP

This is the Democrats’ night.

But Trump has dominated the political conversation since that escalator ride four years ago, and he loathes being upstaged. It’s worth asking: Will he tweet during the debates? And if he does, will NBC and the moderators ignore him or respond in real time?

NBC News executive Rashida Jones said the focus will be on the candidates and the issues.

“Beyond that, it has to rise to a certain level,” she said.

During Wednesday’s debate, Trump will be on Air Force One on his way to the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan. The plane’s cable televisions are usually turned to Fox News, which is not hosting the debates. For the second debate, Trump will be beginning meetings at the G-20.

Trump told Fox Business Network on Wednesday that he’d watch because “it’s part of my life” but that “It just seems very boring. … That’s a very unexciting group of people.”

June 26, 2019 0

THE MEDIA IS YET AGAIN TRYING TO EMOTIONALLY MANIPULATE PEOPLE TO ACCEPT OPEN BORDERS BY EXPLOITING PHOTOS OF DEAD CHILDREN

The Media is Yet Again Trying to Emotionally Manipulate People to Accept Open Borders by Exploiting Photos of Dead Children

Same old dirty trick

JUNE 26, 2019

The media is yet again trying to emotionally manipulate people into accepting open borders by exploiting photos of dead children.

The same press and left-wing talking heads who claim that showing child victims of Islamic terror attacks is “insensitive” are all too willing to share photos of child victims who supposedly died because evil western countries have borders.

“It’s OK when we do it.”

The left has found its new ‘Aylan Kurdi’ – a toddler who washed up dead on a beach in Turkey and whose dead body photo was ruthlessly exploited by progressives to demand western Europe throw open its borders to Middle Eastern migrants.

The latest image shows a man and his 23 month old daughter lying face down dead along the bank of the Rio Grande.

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It is now being breathlessly shared by leftists are yet more proof that the Nazi-like Trump administration has enacted policies that are killing brown people en masse.

In reality, as Raheem Kassam points out, the fault for this poor child’s death lies firmly at the feet of numerous entities, none of which are Trump or his administration.

– The child’s parents for making her cross “some of the most perilous terrain on the continent”.

– Mexico for allowing their country to become a conduit for mass illegal immigration.

– Criminal gangs who are responsible for much of the instability in the region.

– Democrats who incentivize illegal immigration by refusing to support sensible border policies.

– Open borders activists funded by NGOs and corporations who also incentivize dangerous illegal immigration.

The most humanitarian way to prevent tragic scenes like the one above is to disincentivize illegal border crossings.

Matteo Salvini did it and more than halved the number of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean.

If Democrats actually cared about kids dying, they’d help President Trump build the wall.

Do leftists actually want to save the lives of children, or do they want to continue to exploit photos of their dead bodies to score political points and usurp power?

The answer is obvious.

June 26, 2019 0

Bad unless Obama does it? Biden slams Trump for immigration policies he once supported

The former vice president took to the pages of the Miami Herald on Monday to lay out his approach to immigration, positioning himself as the antidote to a toxic president who “is only interested in using his policies to assault the dignity of the Hispanic community and scare voters to turn out on Election Day.”

Those policies have created a “horrifying” situation at the border, Biden wrote, and have taken “a wrecking ball” to US relations in Latin America.

Ever eager to wield his credentials as vice president under the Barack Obama administration, Biden boasts that he was involved in crafting the prior government’s policies toward Latin America, but Obama’s legacy on immigration reflects dismally on a candidate running on a pro-migrant platform.

Biden tells rich donors not to worry, ‘nothing would fundamentally change’ if he won

Throughout President Obama’s two terms, more people were deported than under any previous administration, according to government data, earning him the unfortunate title of ‘Deporter in Chief.’ During Obama’s first four years in office, nearly 400,000 people were deported per year, topping out in 2012 at over 409,000.

Despite Trump’s reputation as a superhawk on the border, his presidency has seen fewer deportations per year than his predecessor, with around 250,000 in 2017 and 2018, and just over 280,000 so far this year.

Critics point out that the separation of migrant children from their families at the border has become more common since Trump took office, but that policy, too, is a carryover from the Obama years. A photo of caged migrant children went viral last year and prompted fierce criticism of President Trump’s inhumane border policies – yet the photo dates to 2014, smack in the middle of Obama’s second term.

Some of the very cages Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently compared to “concentration camps” were, indeed, constructed under President Obama’s purview. The holding facility in McAllen, Texas, the largest in the country and a creation of the Obama administration, has become emblematic of the problems plaguing migrant detention centers. With ill-equipped health facilities and overcrowded cells, the McAllen center was forced to temporarily close its doors earlier this year amid a deadly viral outbreak.

On ‘the Wall’, Biden will also struggle to set himself apart from the president. While the former VP condemns President Trump’s wall proposal as “divorced from reality,” Biden was a vocal supporter of the Secure Fence Act, a project that spent $1 billion building a 700-mile barrier along the border with Mexico.

A recently surfaced video from 2006 captures Biden proudly telling an audience “I voted for a fence,” as he warns of dangerous drug traffickers crossing the border. Later in the clip Biden highlights his ‘tough on crime’ record, bragging “I’m the guy who wrote the crime bill, I’m the guy who wrote the national drug trafficking bill, I’m the guy who wrote the law that set up a drug czar.”

Biden caught in immigration hypocrisy after rediscovered clip shows him demanding border fence

If Biden wants to position himself as the open borders, pro-migrant candidate in the 2020 race, he’ll have to do a better job of hiding his record.

June 24, 2019 0

TWEET CLAIMING TRUMP ‘TORTURE’ OF KIDS IN BORDER CAMPS SHOWS PHOTO ACTUALLY FROM OBAMA ERA

Over 30,000 retweets, zero retraction of completely fake news

JUNE 24, 2019

**A tweet that went viral showing the Trump administration “torture” of children inside Border Patrol camps was actually from August 2015 when Obama was in office.**

Actress Nancy Lee Grahn, who is verified on Twitter, tweeted, “Trump administration is forcing children 2 sleep on cement floor with an aluminum blanket & lights on all night. Sarah Fabian from DOJ argued in court that it was good enough & soap was unnecessary. Companies making 750 a kid a day to torture them.”

However, the photos which illustrated the tweet, taken inside a Border Patrol facility in Tucson, Arizona, are from August 2015.

A journalist responded to Grahn’s tweet by pointing out that it appeared she deliberately cut out the surveillance camera time stamp to mislead her audience.

“Quick question for you: did you deliberately crop out the date on these photos, was it accidental or did you never see any dates and you only had cropped versions all the way through?” asked Brian Cates.

“Note that the bottom of the black redaction box in the upper left corner of the uncropped photo is still VISIBLE in the cropped version that is in your tweet,” he added.

“Did you deliberately make that crop of the date on the photo, or did you never have an uncropped version and you’re only NOW learning the photos are from 2015, when Barack Obama and Jeh Johnson were in office?” asked Cates.

Despite being seemingly caught red handed posting deliberate fake news, Grahn still has the tweet pinned to her page. It has received over 30,000 retweets.

A 2016 NPR article also confirms that the photos were from 2015, but this didn’t stop them from going viral on Reddit.

A post titled “the new regime” included another tweet alongside the images which stated, “I swore I saw someone say it was wrong to compare these to concentration camps, but this is in fact what it is.”

The Reddit post has nearly 60,000 upvotes despite it being completely fake news.

This also serves as a reminder that the so-called detention and separation border policy of the Trump administration was actually an Obama administration policy.

June 24, 2019 0

Ocasio-Cortez: Trump Running ‘Concentration Camps’ at Border

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., speaks during the National Action Network Convention in New York, Friday, April 5, 2019. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

By Joshua Caplan

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Monday evening ratcheted up her attacks on the Trump administration’s immigration policies, referring to President Donald Trump as a “fascist” operating “concentration camps” on the U.S.-Mexico border.

“That is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps,” Ocasio-Cortez said of migrant holding facilities during a Q&A live-streamed on Instagram. “The fact that concentrations camps are now an institutionalized practice in the Home of the Free is extraordinarily disturbing and we need to do something about it.”

The self-avowed Democratic-socialist then voiced her eagerness to connect with others “who are concerned enough with humanity to say that ‘never again’ means something.”

The expression “never again” is strongly associated with Holocaust remembrance.

During another part of the live-stream, the 29-year-old freshman lawmaker warned her followers that “we are losing to an authoritarian and fascist presidency.”

“I don’t use those words lightly,” she continued. “I don’t use those words to just throw bombs. I use that word because that is what an administration that creates concentration camps is. A presidency that creates concentration camps is fascist, and it’s very difficult to say that.”

“The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing, and we need to do something about it,” she added.

In November, Ocasio-Cortez faced blowback after comparing asylum seekers to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany during World War II, attempting to make the point that neither was a “crime.” “Asking to be considered a refugee and applying for status isn’t a crime,” the congresswoman wrote on Twitter. “It wasn’t for Jewish families fleeing Germany. It wasn’t for targeted families fleeing Rwanda. It wasn’t for communities fleeing war-torn Syria. And it isn’t for those fleeing violence in Central America.”

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Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks came as President Trump vowed to deport millions of illegal aliens in a series of tweets.

Ahead of launching his 2020 re-election campaign, the president stated that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will next week “begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States.”

“They will be removed as fast as they come in,” he added.

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June 18, 2019 0

MEXICO ROUNDS UP 800 MIGRANTS NEAR GUATEMALA BORDER

One of biggest immigration swoops in recent months

Daily Mail – JUNE 17, 2019

Mexican officials have detained nearly 800 undocumented migrants discovered in four trucks in eastern Mexico in four trucks.

Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) said in a statement late on Saturday that 791 foreign nationals were found in the trucks stopped in the eastern state of Veracruz, confirming earlier reports of mass arrests.

The discovery of the illegal immigrants was one of the biggest swoops by the INM in recent months.

June 17, 2019 0

WHILE OUR VETERANS SLEEP ON THE STREET, ICE Pampers Transgender Migrants at Detainment Camps

ICE is celebrating Pride Month in the name of social justice.

By Shane Trejo

As an unprecedented national emergency at the U.S. southern border continues to worsen, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is promoting how tolerant they are toward transgender migrants to celebrate Pride Month.

A video released by ICE showed government personnel performing a host of services to make transgender migrants feel comfortable and pampered while they are held in a facility as they attempt to gain refugee status.

Transgender migrants were shown how to braid their hair to accentuate their femininity, working on their gardening skills, using elliptical machines, shooting hoops, playing volleyball, enjoying meals, writing leisurely, enjoying medical care, reading in a library, using computers, singing songs, and getting access to subsidized legal services to help them become legal U.S. residents.

ICE released tweets showing the world their “Dedicated Transgender Unit” at the Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, NM.

While ICE focuses on virtue signaling for the LGBT community, the border crisis is worse than ever. Recent data shows that African migrants are pouring across the U.S. southern border in record numbers.

“We are continuing to see a rise in apprehensions of immigrants from countries not normally encountered in our area,” said Raul Ortiz, who works as the head of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector.

Over 500 African migrants were found coming across the border by the Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector in just one week. That dwarfs the 211 African migrants that were found crossing the border during the entire year of 2018.

Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan addressed troubling numbers last week showing how migrants are skipping hearings meant to adjudicate their asylum status and thus flooding the nation as federal officials lack the resources to stop the invasion.

“Out of those 7,000 cases, 90 received final orders of removal in absentia, 90 percent,” McAleenan said to Sen Lindsey Graham (R-SC) during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, describing the results of a DHS pilot program tracking families making asylum requests.

“90 percent did not show up?” Graham asked.

“Correct. That is a recent sample from families crossing the border,” McAleenan replied.

ICE would be wise to put 100 percent of their resources toward solving a crisis that is an existential threat to the future of the U.S. rather than worrying about the feelings of a population predisposed for mental illness and lascivious behavior.

June 17, 2019 0