By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Afternoon host James T. Harris on major Phoenix-based radio talk station KFYI (550 AM) was outraged at continued blatant manipulation by dominant media over the border crisis that agonizes not only his own Grand Canyon State nor simply the entire Southwest frontier but all of the United States.
Speaking about the tragic new photo of a drowned border-jumping Salvadoran father and his lifeless toddler daughter with her arm wrapped around him on the banks of the Rio Grande, Harris reminded listeners on June 26 that only a few months ago, a united front of open-borders Democrats and their media allies had erected an impregnable wall of denial.
There was absolutely no border crisis except a “manufactured” one just made up by scaremongering President Donald Trump, they insisted early this year.
However, Harris said, now leftists were outraged over this photo, although conservatives have been warning for years of the crisis. His implication was that if the crisis were recognized, perhaps these deaths could have been avoided.
The open-borders UK Guardian posted on June 26, “They were two of dozens who have drowned in the border river this year.”
With numbers of illegal crossers again burgeoning, around one million unauthorized entrants were expected to barge their way into the U.S. just this year, in addition to the many legal immigrants admitted.
The problem isn’t that there’s “such an evil, maniacal media,” Harris said, but “so many gullible people who believe it.” He recalled that a few years ago, in 2015, a photo of a drowned Syrian refugee toddler on a Mediterranean beach elicited similar strong responses.
“I don’t want to be cynical in the face of someone losing their life,” Harris said. “. . . Ladies and gentlemen, all I want you to understand is that the media is not real.”
Various conservative websites including the Washington Examiner and Washington Free Beacon reeled off examples of lying media and politicians who patted news consumers on the head a few months ago with their dangerous phony assurances that there was no problem.
Examiner columnist Byron York quickly provided 26 such examples, which also included anti-Trump Republicans, and said there were “plenty more, for those who care to look.”
Another aspect of the deception was open-borders agitators in politics and media claiming that the unending waves of unauthorized entrants all were fleeing poverty and violence — as if they are only victims who never can fight for reform where they were born.
It never seemed to occur to the border demagogues that one way to face down poverty is to confront it and battle socialist oppressors at home rather than run hundreds or thousands of miles toward funding from American taxpayers that they have no claim to.
Moreover, genuine asylum-seekers don’t get to make the choice of which is the wealthiest country they want to force their way into. The U.S. is no next-door neighbor of El Salvador. Whatever mistaken thinking persuaded this unfortunate Salvadoran father that he deserved to barge into the U.S., his little daughter was punished with loss of her life, too, as surely as if he were a careless driver.
Radio host Harris also recalled that tides of unaccompanied Latino minors didn’t originate during the Trump administration but Barack Obama’s.
On June 25, the Free Beacon posted a CNN interview with Obama as president in 2014 as he warned:
“Our message, absolutely, is don’t send your children unaccompanied on trains or through a bunch of smugglers, that is our direct message to the families in Central America. Do not send your children to the border. If they do make it, they’ll get sent back.”
Pointing to the five-year-old video, CNN anchor John King reminded a panel that large-scale border violation is nothing new. “This issue has been unresolved, different pieces of it, for 20-plus years.”
Another question is why legions of unaccompanied minors suddenly sprang into action back then, after adult males by themselves had been the traditional profile of border jumpers. Entire caravans of families were another aspect that showed something changed to urge them northward now.
Latinos arriving to “reconquer” the U.S. Southwest? The meddling of George Soros’s globalists? The plotting of the Pueblo Sin Fronteras radicals? Their website (pueblosinfronteras.org) says, “Our Dream: To build solidarity bridges among people and turndown (sic) border walls imposed by greed.”
One thing for certain: Democrats weren’t complaining at the possibility that illegal aliens applying for driver’s licenses easily could end up with voter registration. Indeed, already one of the major stories of the 2020 elections should be endless new unauthorized aliens arriving who could tilt those results.
All the strategy of political consultants, pollsters, and pundits may count for less than sheer numbers of balloting foreigners ushered in by power-mad Dem radicals.
One of left-wing Democrats’ many strange assertions was that of New York freshman Cong. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who said the U.S. is running “concentration camps” on the southern border. “And that is exactly what they are,” AOC declared with her familiar tone of ignorant arrogance.
However, no one travels far to break their way into “concentration camps,” unlike the German National Socialists grabbing and imprisoning people. But if all that logorrheic AOC actually meant is that there are crowded, unpleasant conditions at the border, the blame must lie squarely on the border-jumpers and their enablers.
Border towns aren’t equipped to shelter an unending flood of hundreds of thousands of trespassers demanding free food, lodging, recreation, and other accommodation. It would be as if 10,000 strangers suddenly showed up at AOC’s own luxury residence, demanding that she provide them with a dormitory, mess hall, and amenities, feeding and housing them from her own funds.
If she balked or objected to this imposition, AOC, by her own “reasoning,” would become a reprehensible concentration camp warden.
A different border topic that seems to receive less news attention these days is the stash house, a usually crowded place of concealment for contraband and illegal aliens awaiting transportation. The Phoenix metropolitan area once was reported as having more than 1,000 stash houses.
The Epoch Times, an internationally circulated newspaper and website, updated the topic on June 18 under the headline, “Stash Houses: A Hidden and Horrific Phenomenon on Border.”
It gave an example of an unfurnished 20-by-20-foot wooden room in New Mexico crammed with 67 illegal aliens from Guatemala and Ecuador whose shoes had been taken away so they couldn’t flee through the desert.
Meanwhile, Trump raised fresh doubts about his own seriousness on the border. He repeatedly boasted, including at his re-election kickoff rally in Orlando, that “millions” of aliens who already had deportation orders against them soon would be removed from the country.
But then Trump reportedly got a call from Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asking him for a delay, so he quickly granted that. As if delays weren’t already an old story.
Washington Examiner media critic Eddie Scarry posted on June 24: “And now he’s caving on deportations, the least controversial part of immigration enforcement. Trump won the argument on immigration. But when it comes to actually getting anything done, he’s a lot like a normal politician. All talk, no action.
“Why don’t we just cut out the middleman and let the 2020 Democrats set the agenda on immigration? At this point, there would be very little difference if we did,” Scarry said.
The Wanderer asked Arizona conservative GOP political consultant Constantin Querard about the president granting Pelosi’s wish. “If he wants to call Pelosi’s bluff and delay for two weeks, then I trust him to do so,” Querard said. “What matters is that something is done about this crisis, and it is a crisis, no matter how strongly the Democrats deny it.”
Trump may be saved, though, because of Democrat presidential candidates’ own radicalism.
Columnist Betsy McCaughey wrote in the New York Post that at a recent Iowa Dem event, “It was a circus of left-wingers going bonkers for things most Americans don’t want. The frontrunners back abortion any time before birth, abolishing ICE (the immigration-enforcement agency), outlawing gas-burning cars, shutting down fossil-fuel industries that employ millions and redistributing wealth.”
McCaughey concluded: “Democrats eyeing the White House need to get real. By writing off moderate members of their own party, they’re boosting Trump’s chances of re-election. Then again, a Trump victory may be the gut punch that brings the Democratic Party to its senses.”
Good At Her Job
Finally: Arizona got a little publicity when Trump named Stephanie Grisham to be his new White House press secretary upon Sarah Sanders’ departure. After being a spokeswoman for some state capitol politicians in Phoenix not so long ago, Grisham worked as a Trump Arizona campaign press aide then moved on to the national level before ending up as First Lady Melania Trump’s East Wing spokeswoman.
The Wanderer asked political consultant Querard for his opinion of Grisham.
“I’ve had a few opportunities to work with her and I thought she was very good at her job,” Querard replied. “She cared about the people she worked for and was a strong advocate for them as a result. It is great to see her arrive at what is really the pinnacle of her profession.
“There isn’t anything that ranks higher than running the show at the White House for the president of the United States, so I think everyone that knows her and likes her is feeling great for her right now. It is also an incredibly tough job in front of a room full of people who are trying to destroy you personally and professionally, though, so we need to keep her in our prayers,” he said.
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