Radio America Online News Bureau

News & Politics

Rudderless Dems, Kimmel vs. Health Bill, NFL Activism Month?

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are pleasantly reminded the Democrats are also deeply dysfunctional as former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. says he doesn’t know what his party’s economic agenda is.  They also sigh as late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel suddenly becomes the media’s benchmark for whether the latest GOP health care bill is a good idea.  And they groan as four NFL players want to institute a month dedicated to social activism, similar to how the league devotes a month to breast cancer awareness.

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‘Crushing the Collective’

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From the podium of the United Nations to domestic U.S. politics, socialist ideas are frequently discussed and in many cases seem to be advancing in our society, and a new book concludes that the far left has been on the march for a full century in this country and is now on the verge of victory.

President Trump took heat for denouncing the socialist regime in Venezuela during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday and for pointing out socialism and communism result in poverty and misery whenever it is tried.

On the domestic side, in just the past few weeks, over a dozen Senate Democrats have lined up in favor of single payer health care, meaning the government would be in complete control of one-sixth of the economy.

Charles Sasser is a veteran of U.S. Army Special Forces.  He’s a history teacher and a prolific author.  His latest work is “Crushing the Collective: The Last Chance to Keep America Free and Self-Governing.”

He says history is replete with examples of people being convinced to give up their rights for the supposed good of the larger community.  He says collectivism still pushes the same message today.

“Collectivism means the collective is of more value than the individual.  That’s been used by every tyrant ever.  It’s always for the cause, for the people.  You give up this freedom for this and this,” said Sasser.

“Throughout history, the individual has always devolved into the collective.  That’s been the historical movement, from individualism to collectivism, and collectivism always ends in tyranny,” he added.

To prove the rise of collectivism in our own society, Sasser says we only need to examine the widespread popularity of avowed socialist Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential race.

“He could have won it because so many of our young people have been indoctrinated into this idea that you can have free college.  You can have everything free now.  So like pigs squealing at the trough, we’re all running for that trough to get whatever is thrown into the trough for us.  As a result, we give up our independence,” said Sasser.

He says we’re already well down that road as a nation.

“We’re already socialist.  Right now we have 47 percent of the people living off the government.  When you’ve got that many people dependent, guess what?  They continue to want more and more.  You can hear them at the trough, demanding more and more,” said Sasser.

Sasser says it’s not just Sanders.  He says Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are also clear that they embrace collectivism.

“Obama revealed one of his slogans at the 2012 Democratic convention.  He said we belong to the government.  That sounds fascist to me.  It’s definitely collectivism.  Hillary (said) deep-seated cultural codes and religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.  In other words, we have to condition the people to change it,” said Sasser.

He says the course America chooses to chart in the coming years is critical since most of the modern world, including western Europe, are already lost down the road to collectivism.

“Europe’s gone.  It’s declined already.  It’s on its way to collapse,” said Sasser.  “And now the U.S. is collapsing. As a result of this, we’re no longer seen in the world as a stabilizing force,” said Sasser.

“So what happens?  We’re not longer a stabilizing force.  The world is going bonkers.  Who’s going to stabilize it?  Nobody.  We’re in for some interesting times,” said Sasser.

Sasser refers to the Tytler cycle, a concept created by Scottish historian Alexander Tytler in the 1780’s.  The cycle suggests people in bondage turn to faith, which in turn leads to courage and then liberty.  According to Tytler, liberty creates abundance, which then brings on complacency, apathy and dependence before resulting in bondage again.

He says we’re frighteningly far along in that progression.

“Every society throughout history has gone through that same cycle and end up in bondage.  The average endurance of any empire has been about 200 years.  We have exceeded that so far, but in Tytler’s liberty-tyranny cycle, we’re back to the stage of dependency,” said Sasser.

While there may be an historical process to observe, Sasser points out this erosion of the American experiment doesn’t just happen.  He says a very organized and determined effort from the far left has been applying pressure for a full century, with the Frankfurt School in 1917.

He says a key tenet of the Frankfurt School was a “long march” to take over or destroy institutions, from education to the church to the family.

“You take over or destroy whatever stands in the way of socialism.  Never mind that socialism has never worked, never throughout history has it worked and it’s always ended up in tyranny.  It’s just that we call it by different names, but it always ends the same way,” said Sasser.

The Frankfurt School emigrated to London and eventually to the U.S.  Sasser says a key figure in the movement, a German professor named Herbert Marcuse who later taught at the University of California-Berkeley, pioneered the type of selective tolerance we see rampant on campuses today.

“He said to tolerate whatever ideas and movements the left does, but have intolerance for the right.  As a result of that, [they] just destroy everything and take it over in the march through the institutions,” said Sasser.

Sasser says many colleges now cater to keeping the students ignorant, ushering them away from learning history and economics and instead focusing them on gender and race studies.

However, he says opponents of the march to collectivism are fighting with their hands tied behind their back due to the intimidation of political correctness.

“Did you know America now ranks 46th in the world when it comes to first amendment rights of freedom of press and freedom of speech?  Forty-sixth in the world, somewhere near Albania.  Primarily it’s because of political correctness and self-censorship.  We won’t speak out,” said Sasser.

He says the recent debate over the transgender movement is a prime example.

“Men are calling themselves women.  Women call themselves men.  We have 50 different genders now, and we’re not supposed to say something is absurd here?”

“We don’t.  We keep silent.  We accept it.  Once you tolerate something in the first generation, you accept it in the second generation, and then in the third generation you extol it and light up the White House in rainbow colors,” said Sasser.

He says winning the fight against collectivism is very difficult and may well end up being a losing cause, but he says those who want to preserve the best of America must stand up and have their voices heard as the push form the left gets more fierce.

“We have to have courage.  We have to have the courage to say something is wrong.  This is insanity.  It is total insanity and if we follow that over the cliff then we all go over the cliff,” said Sasser.

“That’s what I try to do in this book, to lay it out in a cohesive order so people could understand where we came from, how we got here, what is occurring around us at this moment, and what it’s leading to, and what we can do is mainly speak out,” said Sasser.

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Right to Work Wins Again, Students Clueless on Free Speech, ‘Top Gun’ Ad Flops

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America cheer a court decision that upholds Wisconsin’s right to work law and rejects the argument of organized labor that it has a right to part of workers’ paychecks.  They also shudder as a new study shows students of all political stripes evenly divided on whether “hate speech” should be protected speech, whether it’s OK to shout down speakers they don’t like, or even whether uncomfortable views should be allowed on campus.  And they have fun with a political ad that is a horrible parody of a famous scene from “Top Gun.”

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Why Was Manafort Wiretapped?

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After months of current and former federal officials insisting there was no merit to allegations the government conducted surveillance on Donald Trump or his campaign during the 2016 cycle, there are now reports that former campaign manager Paul Manafort was being wiretapped.

After Trump tweeted his frustration at the Obama administration for greenlighting the alleged wiretapping, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper rejected and validity to such an assertion.

“For the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as DNI, there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect as a candidate or against his campaign,” said Clapper on NBC’s “Meet the Press” back in March.

But CNN’s revelation that the government did procure a FISA warrant against Manafort and conduct surveillance in on him in 2016 and 2017 brings such denials under the spotlight once again.  Most importantly, did they lie?

Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy says the way Clapper and others carefully worded their denials earlier this year probably leaves them some wiggle room.

“I always thought that the denials, as indignant as they were by people connected to the Obama administration and even from the Justice Department after Trump took it over were always carefully couched and very narrow,” said McCarthy.

“What I took the denials to mean was that they were saying they never targeted Trump himself for surveillance and even more specifically that Obama did not do it,” said McCarthy.

“I always thought that was quite narrow because as we know, the president does not go to the FISA court and get the authorization to do these surveillances, much less do the physical work to set up the surveillance himself,” said McCarthy.

“I always thought that the loudness and indignation of the denials was much broader than what the denials actually said read carefully,” he added.

According to CNN’s reporting, Manafort was under surveillance from 2014 to early 2016 and again from late 2016 to sometime earlier this year, including time when Trump was president.  At issue, according to sources, was Manafort’s cozy relationship with the ousted pro-Putin regime of Viktor Yanukovich in Ukraine, and ultimately whether he was tapping those connections to aid Trump’s campaign in any way.

Still, the government’s pursuit of a FISA warrant is much different than a standard criminal search warrant.

“You have to show there’s probable cause that the subject is an agent of a foreign power.  That’s importantly different from a criminal warrant.  In a criminal case, you have to show that there’s probable cause that a crime has been or is being committed and that evidence of a crime is likely to be recovered in the place that you want to search,” said McCarthy.

McCarthy says the political circumstances surrounding the case should not impact the enforcement of the law but he says there is usually great sensitivity exercised when political events could be impacted.  As a result this decision, should have been deliberated at the highest levels of government.

“That gets scrutinized, not only much more carefully at the FISA court, (but) it also should be scrutinized very heavily in the Justice Department, the FBI, and the upper ranks of the administration before you would even go to the FISA court to seek the surveillance,” said McCarthy.

The New York Times is reporting that special counsel Robert Mueller is using “shock and awe” tactics, meaning he is threatening witnesses with considerable punishment for not cooperating fully with the Mueller team.

McCarthy says we already saw that when the FBI conducted a pre-dawn raid of Manafort’s Virginia home in July.  He points out that any raid conducted before 6 a.m. and allowing agents to pick the locks at a home require special permission from the court.

But perhaps the most curious part of the FBI’s physical raid on Manafort’s home was the timing of it.

“The search warrant that Mueller did came on the day after Manafort met with Senate Intelligence Committee investigators and on the very day he was supposed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee,” said McCarthy.

McCarthy suspects there could be multiple motives at work.  One is simply that investigators are eager to determine exactly how much Russia did to influence the 2016 elections, which he believes is warranted.

However, in a politically charged atmosphere like Washington, he says some could be trying to make whatever evidence is in hand fit a political goal.

“I think there are other people looking to cement a political narrative that it was Trump collusion and Russian espionage that cost Hillary Clinton the election.  There’s all kinds of factors and considerations that go into it.  But certainly Manafort and his prior connection to this Ukrainian faction gives a lot of ammunition to the investigators,” said McCarthy.

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Pelosi vs. Amnesty Crowd, Feds Tapped Manafort, Trump & ‘Rocket Man’

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America enjoy watching Nancy Pelosi get drowned out by amnesty activists who think she and Chuck Schumer are not doing enough for people who are in the U.S. illegally.  They also discuss the revelation that the feds did in fact wiretap former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort before and after the 2016 election.  And they have no problem with President Trump referring to Kim Jong-Un as “Rocket Man,” given that decades of professional diplomatic statements have achieved so little.

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Is Trump Second-Guessing Decision to Ditch Climate Deal?

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Key White House officials are denying any change in President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords, but supporters of Trump’s position are increasingly concerned by the growing number of treaty supporters in the president’s inner circle and by he unwillingness to kill the treaty once and for all.

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal quoted European Union’s Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete as suggesting Trump may be mulling a change in policy.

“The U.S. has stated that they will not renegotiate the Paris accord, but they will try to review the terms on which they could be engaged under this agreement,” said Canete, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Trump administration immediately sought to pour cold water on the report.

“Our position on the Paris agreement has not changed. @POTUS has been clear, US withdrawing unless we get pro-America terms,” tweeted White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

On Fox News Sunday, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster called the speculation a “false report.”

“The president decided to pull out of the Paris accord because it was a bad deal for the American people and a bad deal for the environment,” said McMaster.

Trump’s top economic adviser also joined the chorus.

“Per the White House statement on Saturday and consistent with the president’s announcement in June, we are withdrawing from the Paris Agreement unless we can re-engage on terms more favorable to the United States,” said Cohn.

But that statement actually raises more questions than it answers for those concerned about Trump sticking with his decision to withdraw from the treaty.

“The position itself is inherently ambiguous.  What President Trump announced June 1 in the Rose Garden was that he was going to withdraw in November 2019, taking effect the year after that, unless he found better terms.  They have yet to define what those better terms are,” said Christopher C. Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who served on Trump’s transition landing team at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Horner says the debate within the White House before Trump’s announcement in June was a battle royale and he says it still hasn’t stopped.

“The struggle that led up to the June 1 announcement and was particularly acute in May among administration staff, not just Obama administration holdovers and not just career resistance types at the State Department, but some Trump appointees at the White House in the National Security Council and elsewhere, who are fighting to reverse this,” said Horner.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has consistently advocated for staying in the treaty.  On CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, Tillerson said remaining in the deal is still possible.

“The president said he is open to finding those conditions where we can remain engaged with others on what we all agree is still a challenging issue,” Tillerson said.

Horner says Tillerson’s position is not surprising because the State Department bureaucrats are licking their chops to implement this agreement.

“This is the biggest boon for the State Department, possibly ever.  You’re talking about the creation of an enormous climate diplomatic corps,” said Horner.  “They think, oddly enough, when you rob Peter to pay Paul, Paul thinks it’s a great idea.”

“The politicos they’ve brought on board are not the ones you’d want if you wanted to keep the president’s promise,” said Horner.

Horner says the issue is simple.  On Trump’s present course, the debate could rage for another two years.

“The struggle continues.  Until President Trump sends that letter on November 5, 2019, this fight goes on,” said Horner.

Trump’s decision to exit the treaty via letter in 2019 is what aggravates Horner most, pushing fiercely for Trump to declare the agreement a treaty and force the Senate to vote on and likely kill the agreement.

He says by taking unilateral executive action, Trump’s decision is only good for the remainder of his presidency.

“If he wants a durable withdrawal, meaning something that President Warren cannot turn the key on on January 20, 2021, you’re going to have to have the Senate vote,” said Horner.

Horner sees multiple options by which Trump can bring an end to the issue, whether by submitting the treaty to the Senate now or renegotiating the plan and then submitting the amended plan for a vote that would still likely fail, since ratification requires two-thirds of senators to approve.

But Horner says one reason Trump may not be taking that action is because the Senate doesn’t want to touch it.

“So far the Senate has not stirred.  In fact, to my understanding, the Senate told President Trump they don’t want him to involve them,” said Horner.

The treaty is non-binding, leaving many to wonder why Horner and others are wringing their hands over a possible Trump reversal or his allowing his successor to rejoin the agreement.  Horner points out the deal tightens the screws on emissions every five years, so the longer we’re attached to the deal the more pressure we’ll be under to comply.

Already, he says the Germans are desperately trying to keep the U.S. in the fold.

“We have obtained records from the State Department, a cable, saying the Germans are worried that if the rest of the world doesn’t do this to themselves too they will lose billions,” said Horner.

“In other words, ‘It’s not fair that we did this to ourselves.  You’re mean if you don’t do it to yourself too,'” said Horner.

Horner also explained that the real strategy is for the climate change movement to enforce the plan – both at home and abroad – is to use the courts to their advantage.

“The United Nations, just before the president made his announcement, issued a report about how activists could use the Paris treaty to really put the screws to signatories who are claiming it’s not binding,” said Horner.

“The pointed to a decision out of the Hague that’s fairly recent, in which the court said, ‘I know you’ve got your agreement and you’ve got your number here and you’ve also got decades of saying I’m so awful.  I’m so responsible, I’m so obligated,'” said Horner.

Horner says the court at the Hague assigned an even more aggressive plan for reducing carbon emissions and liberal activists in the U.S. are already trying to get federal judges in the Ninth Circuit to enforce the treaty and make the terms even more burdensome.

“So you can say non-binding, but the people behind this know what they’re up to and they know who occupies our judicial benches here,” said Horner.

Not only does Horner warn that failing to get the Senate to vote on the treaty allows the next president to reverse Trump’s decision, but he says keeping the Senate out of the fray will permanently damage the separation of powers.

“This is simply a beginning point for the courts.  That’s a key reason why it’s so dangerous.  The other is, of course, that you have outsourced policy making to this body instead of to our Senate as our Constitution dictates.  You’ve gutted the treaty power, probably forever, if you just shrug at this usurpation of the Senate’s treaty role,” said Horner.

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Closing the Embassy in Cuba? Refugee Bomber in London, College Park’s Shame

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud the Trump administration for considering a full closure of the U.S. embassy in Cuba in response to the bizarre sound wave assaults on U.S. diplomats in Havana and urge officials to follow through on the idea.  They also discuss the revelation that the London tube bomber was a teenage refugee just three years ago and why extreme vetting makes perfect sense.  And they get a kick out of College Park, Maryland, council members having to admit they actually didn’t vote to allow illegal immigrants to vote in local elections because they didn’t know their own charter.

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Berkeley Stays Calm, Harvard’s Manning Mistake, Terrorism in London

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are happy to see Ben Shapiro was able to give his speech at Berkeley without incident in the auditorium and minimal unrest outside, which this year counts as very good news. They also unload on Harvard for offering convicted spy Bradley Manning, who now identifies as Chelsea Manning, a position as a visiting fellow, and only rescinding the offer after the intelligence community denounces the move. And they groan as a terrorist attack on the London tube injures 22 people and suggests terrorists there might be changing their tactics.

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America’s Stunning Civic Illiteracy

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A new survey shows huge swaths of the American people don’t know the most basic tenets of our government, and a Hillsdale College politics professor says the lack of knowledge is playing a huge role in the politics of outrage and violence since the perpetrators have no idea how our system works.

Earlier this month, the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania released a survey showing a dismal comprehension of constitutional basics.  A third of Americans could not name a single branch of government.  Another 27 percent could only name one.  Only 26 percent could list the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

When asked to name one of the freedoms enshrined in the first amendment to the Constitution, 37 percent could not name any.  Forty-eight percent did come up with freedom of speech, but when asked to name another, only 15 percent could name freedom of religion, 14 percent cited freedom of the press, 10 percent knew of the right to assembly, and just three percent were aware of their right to petition the government to address their grievances.

Hillsdale College Politics Professor Adam Carrington says these numbers are pretty consistent with what we’ve seen in recent years.

“Polls have shown this consistently.  This is not an anomaly.  This is a consistent lack of knowledge of that by which we are supposed to govern ourselves.  So it’s a fundamental and massive problem,” said Carrington.

Carrington says the problem is especially acute given the responsibility placed in American citizens to run their government.

“If we were in a monarchy, I would say it doesn’t matter at all, but we’re a republic, where people rule through laws and they particularly rule through the Constitution.  For those who exercise the people’s rule to be held accountable, you actually have to know the standard by which you’ve established to hold them accountable,” said Carrington.

In addition, he says ignorance about our system feeds the rabid political environment we’re in today.

“People believe that what’s constitutional is what I like and what’s unconstitutional is what I don’t like, and that’s just not the way that our system of government works,” said Carrington.

Carrington says critical concepts like the separation of powers and checks and balances are part of the genius of our system, and when people are clueless about these ideas and why we have them, politics become toxic and even dangerous.

“I think when people are ignorant of how those things work, they basically get frustrated with the system and reject the very things that make it effective.  I think that’s why you see some people wanting to turn to violence, some people not understanding the way the system is supposed to work,” said Carrington.

“This kind of government can’t survive, at least for long, unless you have that bedrock principle of government of the people and a people who are worthy of governing themselves,” said Carrington.

How did our civic illiteracy get to this point?  Carrington sees a couple of prime factors, starting with the greater emphasis on education being a pipeline to a good job and an almost exclusive focus on the STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering, and math.

He says there’s nothing wrong with those subjects but insists education is about much more than that.

“A place like Hillsdale and other places that have an older view of education and say, ‘Well, no, actually learning to be a good citizen is an essential part of education.’  Sure, you can be a nurse or a teacher or a lawyer in your day job, but when are you not a citizen?  I think that lack focus has caused a massive problem as far as our civic literacy,” said Carrington.

But in addition to schools steering the focus of education away from citizenship, Carrington says another troubling reality to consider.

“I think it is also due to a rejection by many of the American founding and of the Constitution.  Some people believe it’s not worth studying, not just because they are focused on getting jobs as the role of education but they’ve rejected the very principles that undergird the Constitution itself,” said Carrington.

Nonetheless, Carrington says education is the key to turning this civic illiteracy around.

“It has to be through education and I think it has to become a commitment of the society in general.  It has to be a commitment of our curriculum in our schools.  It has to be something that’s taught in entertainment and that’s taught in homes,” said Carrington.

In recent years, Hillsdale College has offered free online courses on the Constitution and other aspects of our system of goverenment.

“Hillsdale’s really been trying to push civic education, having online courses and other things, because until the people know their own government it’s not going to get better.  I think there has to be a concerted, dedicated effort to doing that,” said Carrington.

He encourages anyone who feels like they’re lacking in civic knowledge to rectify that by learning about our founding and helping to turn civic literacy in the right direction.

“Hillsdale has tried to offer a lot of free resources and classes online – on the courts, on the Federalist Papers, on the presidency, on the Constitution – to try to give you the resources to bridge that gap, so that you can be a good citizen.  You can be a knowledgeable citizen that can take part in the kind of renewal of self-government that we so sorely need,” said Carrington.

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‘I’m Afraid the President is Getting Rolled’

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President Trump and Democratic Party leaders in Congress say they are closing in on a deal that would have Congress enshrining the legal status of illegal immigrants who came here as children in exchange for what Trump calls “massive border security,” but a leading immigration activist thinks the president is getting snookered.

“I’m afraid the president is getting rolled,” said Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian.  “He simply let (Senate Minority Leader) Chuck Schumer set the terms of this debate.”

Trump met with Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Wednesday night at the White House to discuss the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.  Following the meeting, Schumer and Pelosi released a statement suggesting a deal was done to approve legislation to give young people here illegally and enrolled in the program permanent legal status.

Trump later tweeted that there was not a done deal and all later said the details still needed to be worked out on border security, although the Democrats reiterated that they would not approve funding to build a wall on the southern border.

Krikorian says Schumer has the upper hand in this debate, as he’s been immersed in it for decades.

“Chuck Schumer has been doing immigration for 30 years.  He was responsible for the 1986 amnesty, the last push to get it over.  He was in the House of Representatives then,” said Krikorian.  “He was the motivating force behind the Gang of Eight that passed the Senate.”

Krikorian says Trump is not well-versed at all in immigration policy and he can see Schumer winning Trump over in the language Trump is now using.

“President Trump doesn’t know anything about the immigration issue.  So Schumer tells him, ‘This wouldn’t be an amnesty, Mr. President, because they wouldn’t get citizenship.’  Trump just mouths those cliches that we have been hearing now for years that are straight out false,” said Krikorian.

“The president has no idea about any of this stuff.  I am happy to stipulate that he is good at real estate deals.  That may well be the case.  But dealing with mob and labor bosses and crooked building inspectors, those guys are much more reliable negotiating partners than Chuck Schumer.  The president is like a babe in the woods.  He’s getting taken for a ride,” said Krikorian.

Krikorian suspects the challenge for Trump is getting even steeper given the myriad of staff changes that leave very few immigration hawks in the White House.

“Everybody with a position of authority is either a liberal Democrat or is a non-political retired general who really don’t have strong political views.  They just want to see things fixed and work better.  And that’s a recipe for the president alienating himself from his base,” said Krikorian.

He says Trump and everyone else in the debate needs to see that granting permanent legal status to young illegal immigrants enrolled in DACA amounts to amnesty and they must proceed accordingly.

“Every amnesty – and that’s what this is is an amnesty, if you let illegals stay that’s an amnesty – every one always draws new illegal immigration into the country and then causes a surge of legal immigration down the stream as their relatives come in,” said Krikorian.

Krikorian believes Obama’s creation of DACA through the executive branch in 2012 was blatantly illegal, but he says that’s not the fault of the people who enrolled and the humanitarian thing to do is to make good on that promise.

However, he says only those actually enrolled in DACA, and not all illegal immigrants brought here as young children, should be considered for the legislation.  He also urges businesses to use the E-Verify system to check the immigration status of job applicants and for the government to crack down on employers who knowingly hire people in the U.S. illegally.

Krikorian urges Trump to use this moment to make tough demands of Democrats in exchange for relenting on DACA.

“What kind of provisions do you include in a bill like that to make sure that an amnesty that  may be 700,000 or 800,000 people doesn’t do more harm than good,” said Krikorian.

He strongly encourages Trump and congressional Republicans to insist that portions of the RAISE Act be included in any bill.  In addition to favoring prospective immigrants with college educations and the ability to provide for themselves, the legislation would also tighten which family members could later be brought in by immigrants.

Krikorian says giving DACA enrollees the ability to confer legal status on their parents must be prevented.

“Their parents knew what they were doing when they came here.  They weren’t children.  They don’t deserve the benefit from this amnesty, so what we need is to change the family immigration system so that it only focuses on husbands, wives, and little kids and not all these other adult relative categories we have now,” said Krikorian.

And he says all of this must be included in the same legislation as the enactment of DACA or the Democrats will win everything they want in exchange for nothing.

“It absolutely has to be in one piece.  If they get everything they want then it’ll be just like 1986, where they got their amnesty first and the enforcement never happened,” said Krikorian.

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