Thursday was the rollout of President Donald Trump’s “Build America Visa” program, a comprehensive merit-based immigration program that would also introduce English comprehension and civics testing as prerequisites for immigration. The plan is unlikely to receive too much consideration in Congress in its current form, given that the Democrats control the House and the proposal contains no mention of DACA. That wasn’t the only problem the Democrats were going to have with the plan, either, considering that it also sought to streamline the asylum process at our southern border.
The media was all over this part of the proposal — particularly Jim Acosta, who somehow managed to out-Acosta himself with his Twitter coverage of what the president said about asylum.
Here was Acosta’s tweet on the issue:
Jim Acosta ✔@Acosta
Trump in Rose Garden speech paints asylum seekers with broad brush accusing them of misleading immigration authorities at border: “These are frivolous claims.”
“Trump in Rose Garden speech paints asylum seekers with broad brush accusing them of misleading immigration authorities at border: ‘These are frivolous claims,'” Acosta reported.That sounds pretty harsh, even to me. The problem is that this was such obviously deceptive editing that it got the attention of Breitbart’s Charlie Sperling:
Jim Acosta ✔ @Acosta · Trump in Rose Garden speech paints asylum seekers with broad brush accusing them of misleading immigration authorities at border: “These are frivolous claims.”
Charlie Spiering ✔ @charliespiering
Full quote: "Unfortunately legitimate asylum seekers are being displaced by those lodging frivolous claims."
In fact, here’s the fuller context, which sounds even more exculpatory for the president and more condemnatory for Acosta:
“We must also restore the integrity of our broken asylum system,” Trump said. “Our nation has a proud history of affording protection to those fleeing government persecutions. Unfortunately, legitimate asylum seekers are being displaced by those lodging frivolous claims — these are frivolous claims — to gain admission into our country.
“Asylum abuse also strains our public school systems, our hospitals, and local shelters, using funds that we should, and that have to, go to elderly veterans, at-risk youth, Americans in poverty, and those in genuine need of protection. We’re using the funds that should be going to them. And that shouldn’t happen. And it’s not going to happen in a very short period of time.”
Jim Acosta ✔@Acosta ·
Trump in Rose Garden speech paints asylum seekers with broad brush accusing them of misleading immigration authorities at border: “These are frivolous claims.”
Official Trump War Room ✔@TrumpWarRoom
You know there's video proving you're lying, right?
Trump: "Our nation has a proud history of affording protection to those fleeing government persecutions. Unfortunately, legitimate asylum seekers are being displaced by those lodging frivolous claims….My plan expedites relief" pic.twitter.com/Gvz93vZBh3
The only thing that Acosta took out of that was an aside — “these are frivolous claims” — even though the majority of it was pointing out that the system was broken.
And by the way, it’s broken enough that even liberal New York Times writer Thomas Friedman knows it.
In a piece where he admitted there was a serious border crisis (while still criticizing Trump’s handling of it), Friedman noted that “roughly 30 percent of those apprehended [at the border] sought asylum — up from 1 percent a couple of years ago. Asylum is a humanitarian status based on fear of persecution in one’s native land. Many of these requests are legitimate; some are economic migrants gaming the process. But once you’re in the U.S. and file for asylum, there’s a good chance for you to stay — legally or illegally.”
This is almost exactly the same thing that Trump had to say, albeit with statistics that show just how serious the asylum problem is. Yet nobody took the line “some are economic migrants gaming the process” and reduced the entire piece to that.
Acosta is engaged in profoundly deceptive editing. And yet, he refused to back down even after someone provided the transcript to him (just in case he didn’t hear it):