President Trump's Big Immigration Shift

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There was a piece in the New York Times yesterday,
of course, the perfect thing to run on Father's Day,
a liberal author giving a screed about her dad, about
how insufficient, inadequate, bad her dad was, while her dad
is still alive, by the way, and presumably able to

(00:23):
read The New York Times, and she had written some
things about how, you know their relationship was sort of
improving in some way. Well, I ain't going to be
improving after this. What my dad gave me this opinion
guest essay. And you read through this piece and it's

(00:44):
got stuff like this. My father gave me his freckly skin,
and like him, I had melanoma. He gave me asthma
and protruding elbows that are identical to his own. I
don't know what a protruding elbow is. He gave me
reddish hair that's kindly reluctant to go gray. He gave
me an aversion to drinking by not having one himself,

(01:05):
by not having an aversion, So my dad's an alcoholic. Okay,
that's super nice. He did not give me the seat
next to him at a San Diego Chargers game. He
had season tickets when I was a kid, but I
only found out about it years later. Okay, so we're
complaining that he didn't take you to football games. He

(01:27):
gave me the ability to talk to anyone because I
couldn't stand the awkward silences that he provided. He gave
me really nice houses to grow up in, but we
moved a lot for his work, and things never seemed
to be going well. So he gave me the financial
He gave me financial anxiety too. He gave me the

(01:50):
tools to withstand a sexist world. He would say, Hillary
looks ugly in her pantsuits and her voice. Women don't
belong on the golf course. This was my exposure therapy.
He gave it generously. She's just bringing up every not
kind thing her her dad ever did. He didn't give

(02:11):
me a response. When I was little and watching a
baseball game on TV with him, why I wanted to
know did the umpire call a strike when the batter
didn't swing his back? He couldn't be bothered to explain.
So she's bringing up like one ran. I mean, really
should a dad be like you know? Any one question

(02:34):
that a kid asks that he doesn't answer is gonna
be fodder for a hit piece against him in the
New York Times thirty years later. Some things I took
from him his Fox News when I set up his
cable copies of love letters he'd written to a woman
who wasn't my mom that I found when I was
helping him move. So your dad was cheating on your mom?

(03:01):
Well do you know? Well there's no context for that.
That just throw them that out? Was it before he
met your mom? Was it while he was married to
your mom? Was it like? Did you hear and your
mom get divorced? And then he was writing love letter?
What's going on? I gave him things too. I gave

(03:22):
him disappointment when I was born a girl. Then I
gave him grandsons. I once gave him something really nice.
He'd been forced to sell his signed baseball collection when
he was having financial trouble. I wrote about it in
the Times, and the fact that he'd gotten all the signatures.
When he was fourteen and a batmoy for the Chicago
White Sox, the White Sox front office contacted me asking
if my dad would throw out the first pitch at

(03:43):
a game. I took him to Chicago and at eighty
five he took to the mound. I didn't give him
a hard time about missing the plate. The time for
all the giving and withholding feels over And I couldn't
tell you the tally you just did. You just gave
a tally of all the rotten things you're like, some
of which didn't seem that bad. Your dad had a

(04:04):
lot of awkward silences in his conversation. Okay, some guys
are not talking. I don't know, no sympathy there for
your dad. That maybe your dad just had a difficult
time relating to his children, That maybe that was a
thing he felt bad about all. The fact that your
dad watched Fox News makes him an evil, horrible person.

(04:28):
There's a feeling of loss. Of course, that's stronger now
that I know that he had it in him. But
it comes with warmth for him, and that is new
and it feels good. On a recent visit, we had
coffee together in the dining room of the assisted living place.
Refusing his eternal gift of awkward silence, I kept the
conversation going. She keeps going on and on about the
fact that he has awkward silences. Maybe he just had

(04:50):
a personality like that that he found it difficult to
talk and relate to people. I don't know. I don't
remember what he talked about, but I am sure he
eventually asked questions about my husband, my boys, and David Brooks. Again,
that's another shot that he only wants to talk about
men or something. At one point, I reached across the

(05:12):
table and gave him my hand. I'd never done anything
like that before. I'm not sure why I did it.
Then he took it. I just cannot fathom this. This
is a big old essay in the New York Times,
clearly and boils down to a couple of thoughts about it.

(05:34):
I was really revolted seeing this. First of all. I
am more and more believing this. I'm not saying every
liberal is this way, but a lot of liberal leaning
people are. So much of modern day liberalism feels like

(06:03):
resentment against your parents, and it's hard to psychoanalyze, you know,
millions of people all in a single political movement, But
I kind of feel like it's true. I think there

(06:23):
are millions of millennials who became liberal with some sort
of resentment and antipathy to the fact that their parents
watch Fox News. This seems to be a constant, repeated theme,
annoyance at your parents because they watch Fox News, annoyance

(06:51):
at your parents because of this and that, and you
can kind of see it. I mean, I think of
how much, you know, how broad of a stereotype do
I want to paint with today, How broad of a

(07:12):
brush do I want to paint with? How big? How
much do I want to you know, play to stereotypes.
I'm hardly the first person to bring up the idea.
I don't know how scientifically rigorous it is, but it
seems anecdotally true quite a bit that a lot of

(07:36):
same sex attracted persons if I will, report having bad
relationships with their fathers and the absence of fathers and
of father figures. Again, I don't know how rigorous that is.
It's just a thing that's out there in the either.
I don't know how true it is, find it. It

(07:59):
seems to make sense to me as far as my
relationship with my own children, and just sort of seeing
on a day to day level the practical positive impact
it makes to be there providing a different kind of parenting,
a complementary kind of parenting to that which their mother provides.

(08:24):
And I can see how, especially for my girls, if
I am distant if I am cold, if I am
pigheaded towards them, if I model certain kinds of bad behaviors,
I can see how that can, especially depending on a

(08:45):
kid's personality type, result in deep resentments. I can see
all of that, and I can see how some of
those resis can lead to becoming more liberal, sort of
being too authoritarian or being too distant or whatever. But

(09:12):
the thing about that article that just most saddened me.
I mean, just the idea of publishing something like that
about your father when your father's still alive. It led
me to think about my own dad and my own
dad who passed away. My dad was sixty seven years

(09:35):
old when he passed back in March of twenty twenty four,
and to think about, you know, one of the things
that I guess was kind of clarifying about his passing
was that after he's gone, there's this part of you

(09:59):
that is sort of thinking about, well, were there things
that could have been said or should have been said,
or you know, were there things about how my dad
raised us that could have been better? Could have you know?
You know, maybe I think my dad was an amazing dad.
I wouldn't say he was perfect, certainly, no one is.

(10:23):
And I think sort of the good thing about the
Christian attitude or the Christian worldview. The Christian ethic is charity,
loving God above all things, and loving your neighbor as yourself,

(10:43):
loving your dad as yourself. And part of loving your
parents as yourself is loving them for all their faults
and seeing that you're no peach either, that you're not
perfect either, and to afford a bit of grace, a

(11:09):
bit of compassion understanding for your parents, who often were
going through crap. You had no idea of stresses that
they didn't burden you with because you were a kid
and they loved you, and it's not your responsibility to
bear the burden of you know, my dad took care

(11:33):
of a patient who died, or you know, maybe something
you know, there was a doctor at work who was
doing drugs and my dad had to fire him, or
you know, something stressful. His partners were getting angry about
this and that and the other, and he's trying to
negotiate something very tense. You don't as a kid, you

(12:00):
can walk away with resentments based on things you barely
even halfway know. And at my dad's death, it's like
I was sort of thinking of like, well, there were
things I wish I had done better by him with

(12:21):
and I had no serious grievances against my dad, and
believe me, but I do sort of think, you know,
you know, it would have been nice to have been
able to do this or do that. And I felt
like after he passed the embrace of Christian charity, that

(12:44):
I felt for my dad and that you know, I
hope he is able to enjoy towards me right now
in the next life is such that it allows all
to be forgiven, that I bear no ill will towards

(13:04):
my dad for any flaw he may have had. And again,
my dad was a wonderful, wonderful man and a wonderful,
wonderful father, and I have so much to be grateful for.
So it's not like I've got some big lineup of
you know, critiques of him that I'm shouldering or anything.
So you know, maybe that's easier for me. And again

(13:26):
I'm not saying, you know, there's some dads who are monsters.
There's some dads who are horrible, horrible, horrible people. And
this discussion sounds different for someone whose dad, you know,
beat them or beat their mom, or you know something
like that. I think though, that having the grace and
wisdom and maybe the maturity to see I am deeply imperfect.

(13:53):
I am not the best person. I would wish that
my parents would have grace and mercy and forgiveness and
compassion towards me for the difficulties that I put them through,
and the difficulties that I present to them, and the

(14:14):
ways that I annoy them, and the ways that I
am sometimes you know, no peach to be around, the
ways that I disappoint them, and the ways that I'm inadequate.
I would want them to have grace and forgiveness and
love me in spite of those failings. And I think children,
especially adult children, should model that should should demonstrate that

(14:42):
that this is part and that maybe this is just
a healthy way to grow up. I found this more
and more in my marriage is don't don't carry baggage
with you. Don't carry the baggage of a little fight
over a little thing. Apologize even if you think that

(15:04):
you're not in the wrong, because half the time you
probably are in the wrong. Forgive other people, because half
the time you're probably doing stupid stuff that you should
be forgiving. That you should be seeking forgiveness for and

(15:25):
I think that's an important thing to think about on fire.
I mean, that's why I hated this, this New York
Times piece so much. Or the author's just trashing her
dad in the pages of the New York Times. Well,
the poor guy's still alive, like airing is dirty laundry out,
Like that's no way to treat your father, because it's

(15:48):
no way you would want to be treated. I guarantee
you this woman, she's probably got things in her life.
She's not proud of things, she's embarrassed about things she
should be embarrassed about, and she would hope, I presume
that her parents would love her enough not to trash

(16:09):
her for it, and to still love her in spite
of her faults. Why wouldn't you afford that same grace
to your father? Anyway, it was a horrible thing, I
think for the New York Times to publish that on
Father's Day. But at very least I think I think
it's a kind of clarifying thing. How I don't know

(16:32):
what it is. Maybe it's the modern industry of therapy
that it's so often built around resentments towards your dad
or something. I don't know. It seems bizarre, all right.
When we return, I drove past the No King's Rally,
one of them in Fresno. Anyway, we'll talk about it
next on the John Girardi Show. So I was driving

(16:54):
around on Saturday morning. It's sort of Saturday mid day
about I guess about eleven eleven thirty, and I drove
past Fashion Fair and I saw one of the big
No King's rallies. So these are the astro turfed anti

(17:14):
Trump rallies that are taking place all over the country,
which hilariously, Judge Charles Bryer, the judge from the Northern
District of California who tried to block President Trump's activation
at the California National Guard, was talking about, oh, Donald,
He's not allowed to act like a king. He can't
just activate the National Guard anytime he feels like, you

(17:35):
can't act like a king, which is hilarious that this
is a judge who is just repair atting liberal talking
points right now that Trump is acting like a king.
Trump is acting like a king. And the idea that
which I felt it was a very odd, just a
very odd kind of rhetorical angle to take Donald Trump's

(18:00):
seeing like a king, and we don't have kings in
America because because of ice immigration enforcement and because of
activating the National Guard. Neither of those things to me
seem characteristic of a king. It seems characteristic of a president.

(18:21):
Presidents execute the law. Federal immigration law is what it is.
The president can tell federal employees federal law enforcement to
go enforce federal law. It's kind of one within the
constitutional wheelhouse of the president. Even activation of the National
Guard is like pretty one hundred percent obviously within the

(18:44):
scope of the president, he can activate the National Guard.
John Kennedy activated the National Guard to enforce federal law
when the governor of Alabama wasn't allowing schools to be desegregated,
and so John Kennedy activated the Alabama National Guard. Like
I find it, it's just seems like a weird angle. No,

(19:09):
we don't believe in kings in America. Well, well yeah, obviously,
but nothing that he's doing seems like characteristic of a king.
Seems characteristic of a president who's very vigorously trying to
enforce federal law. You can say it's good or bad,
but you know, it is what it is. So I
drove past and The thing I thought was funniest about

(19:31):
the No King's rally was I it seems to be
a very scattershot mission focused, a very diffused sort of mission,
Like what what is the point of this rally? Driving past,
I saw upside down American flag, a Palestinian flag, Mexican flag,

(19:57):
Gay Pride flag, trans flag. I saw someone holding up
Planned Parenthood signs, So what the cause that they were
advocating against? Now? I saw several people with anti ICE signs.

(20:17):
I have a friend who works for PG and E
who was texting us laughing like what did we do?
Because he saw someone with a sign that said, you know,
for f ICE and FPG and E. And he's like, well,
whoa wait, what does PG and have to do with
any of this? Why are we taking space line? And
to which I said, you guys know why no one

(20:38):
likes PG and E. So I just thought it was
funny in that sense. But it relates to this that
some people have pointed out the left has more and
more sort of they seem to insist that every issue
is connected to every other issue, that it's the uniticause
as people call it, that being pro LGBT is the

(21:02):
same as being pro gazo, which is the same as
being pro labor, which is the same as being anti ice,
which is it's this bizarre attitude they have. It's the
intersectionality concept that all these things are interconnected and that
the more sort of historic aggrievances you have, the higher

(21:26):
you are within the liberal hierarchy. So it was funny
to see it all on display in a way that
was like puzzling as far as like, what actually is
this rally about? And it seemed just to be about
the entire I guess Democratic Party platform more or less.
All right, when we return, some really significant shifts in

(21:48):
what President Trump is saying about immigration enforcement and trying
to grapple with the ethics of it. Next on the
John Gewardy Show, a lot of odd shift, odd and
very sudden shifting from President Trump in the last week
when it comes to immigration and immigration enforcement and immigration prioritization.

(22:11):
And I kind of want to break down what's happening
and why now. I'm trying to sort through my own
opinions on it, because on the one hand, there's a
part of me that's a little look generally speaking, I'm
in favor of stricter immigration enforcement. I think what Trump's

(22:32):
done to actually secure the border has been fantastic, even
the if only the attitude the Trump has created on
the part of Latin American immigrants of don't try, don't
try to cross the border illegally, because it's not going
to work. Trump's going to deport your ass. That has
been the biggest signal success of the first five months

(22:52):
of the Trump administration is to stop that trafficking at
the border, so that that's to be applauded and in general, yeah,
I think people who come into the country illegally should
be sent back. My problem is, and it's this legal
concept of reliance. Okay, you have acted in reliance on

(23:17):
certain representations made to you, You have incurred costs or
damages or something based on acting in reliance to what
someone says to you, and then someone pulls the rug
out from under you. I see that. So the reliance
angle is one area where generally speaking, you know, I'm

(23:41):
not too sympathetic to you know, I'm not a bleeding
heart crying at every single illegal alien, sob story. At
a certain point, people are adults and they know they
were skirting the law, and they skirted the law that
there are consequences to doing that, and I feel bad
for them. And I'm not saying we should, you know,
whip them with chains or anything, but that you know,

(24:03):
if you're not in the country legally, you gotta go
back often. I mean I at a certain level. That's
you know, that there's a little bit of a tough
love or whatever whatever you want to call it. The
one part of that, though, that gives me pause, is

(24:23):
the ping ponging back and forth that we've seen with
American immigration policy. Slightly better control of the border, though
still a lot of illegal immigration happening under Bush, a
lot of illegal immigration happening under Obama, though Obama did
deport quite a few people, Trump locking things down, Biden

(24:45):
opening things wide up, Trump locking things down again, And
the fact that people came into the country illegally stayed
here because we didn't rea enforced the law for a
long time. Either Obama or Biden gave this these representations

(25:07):
basically to these people, ah yeah, just come on in,
ah whatever. And the real problem was Biden letting people
in under color of law, but simultaneously him breaking the
law in order to do that. That's the thing that
people I think don't grasp. The biggest category of people

(25:32):
for which this was problematic was asylum seekers. Okay. People
in Latin America figured out, if you go to the
border and you make an asylum claim, that can be
a way to get you to the front of the
legal immigration line. Why, okay, asylum was a process that
was set up. I don't actually know the historic setup

(25:54):
for it, but I think the paradigmatic example would have
been someone fleeing from Cuba. All Right, Fidel Castro is
going to kill you and kill your family. You get
a bunch of tires together from the fifty seven Chevy,
you strap them together, you make a little raft, and
you float from Cuba to wash up onto Miami Beach.

(26:16):
Now did you legally immigrate to America? Did you legally
immigrate to Miami? Well, no, you didn't have time. Fidel
Castro is going to put a bullet through your head.
So no, you didn't have time to contact the relevant
immigration authorities say hey, I would like to apply for
a visa blah blah blah. No, you're fleeing an active persecution.

(26:37):
There's something happening in your home that's so dangerous that
you have to flee Now I could see someone in
a situation like that. In Mexico. Your town is controlled
by the cartel. They can operate pretty freely throughout Mexico.
You're near the American border, you realize that they are
going to kill you and kill your family because you

(27:00):
don't want to pay them or something, and so you
flee to Brownsville, Texas and say, hey, I gotta leave. Like,
if I stay where I am in Mexico, the cartel
completely controls the area. The civil authorities can't do anything.
They can't protect me. If I don't come here, I'm
gonna die. My family's gonna die. Okay, I'm sure there

(27:22):
are some people for whom that's legitimate. The problem is
that everyone and their brother realize that's a way to
sort of bypass the normal waiting around applications, et cetera
that come with the normal legal immigration process. So you
go to the border, you make an asylum claim, and

(27:43):
what has to happen, Well, a judge has to review
your asylum claim, and the American immigration judges are backed
up years with asylum applicants all making asylum claims. Now,
what was really happening, Well, the vast majority of people
were making bogus asylum claims. They were making claims that

(28:08):
really they just wanted to come to America so they
could make money. That's what it was. That's all it was.
They just wanted to go to America for the same
reason that millions of people for years and years and
years have wanted to come to America, which is more
economic opportunity. But they're pretending it's an asylum claim so
that they can kind of get to the front of
the line, don't have to do the normal application process

(28:31):
visa dah bah bah bah. Now, American laws says while
you're waiting for your asylum claim to be processed and adjudicated,
you are to be held basically in a holding cell
like incarcerated. Basically you're supposed to be kept underlocking key.

(29:00):
We only have like forty thousand such rooms, sells whatever
it is accommodations for people making asylum claims. And we
got millions of people making these asylum claims. So that's
what federal law requires that this person is to be
detained until their asylum claim is adjudicated. So what do

(29:20):
you do? We physically cannot detain these people. The Trump
administration answer was remain in Mexico. Okay, while your asylum
claim is being adjudicated, you gotta wait in Mexico. The

(29:43):
Biden administration action was, while your claims adjudicated, we will
give you a kind of reprieve from your need to
be detained, and we'll just let you into the country.
Let you into America. We will give you a kind
of parole. That Biden just made up. He just invented

(30:05):
this idea that he was allowed to give people parole
from the normal detainment that comes with the time when
you're supposed to have your asylum claim processed. And he
was doing this so much that that was what the
whole CBP one app was about. It was basically a
way to have people coming to the border who are
about to get to the border, have them pre submit

(30:29):
their asylum claim, pre receive their parole from the necessary
detainment process, then they come into the United States. It
was also a way for Biden to cook the books,
basically to lessen the number of you know, border encounters,
you know, not legally authorized border encounters that the border

(30:50):
patrol was experiencing. If the people had already gone if
the people had already gone through the app already made
the asylum request, already got the necessary parole to allow
them to come into the country. Well, then this isn't
someone making a border encounter who's not legally authorized to
be here. So the numbers looked better at the border,

(31:15):
but Biden had no legal authority to do that. I
think you can make a very credible argument that Trump,
the first Trump administration remain in Mexico policy. That that
was more colorably, Like you have sort of this impossible
situation of you cannot detain all these people while their
asylum claim is made. So what did the Trump administration do?

(31:38):
Well leave it, stay in Mexico, Stay in Mexico while
your asylum claim is being adjudicated. There's an impossibility at
following the law. I think that's more reasonable. I think
creating a parole that does not exist, that you don't
have legal authority to create is ludicrous, Like you're creating

(32:04):
this whole program, this whole setup, like that it's done
under cover of law. And this, I think is the unfairness.
You had all these people coming to America because the
President of the United States was saying, come on in,
come on in, I give you this parole. Come into

(32:25):
the country, and now all of a sudden, an election
happens and they're being yanked back when they just acted
on a kind of reasonable reliance on what American legal
authorities were saying at the time. The problem is, I
think the American legal authorities were breaking the law, not
following the law. I think Biden's actions were violating American law. Now,

(32:53):
the big change Trump has signaled is shifting enforcement away
from businesses like hotels and farms. All of a sudden, Trump,
who was like, We're gonna do mass deportations and deport
everybody is saying, well, not these people, And it's kind

(33:18):
of leaving me scratching my head. Not sure how I
feel about it. On the one hand, I would want
a merciful policy, if you will, a policy that recognizes
the fact that a lot of people were acting in
reliance on the Biden administration And are you know, hey,

(33:39):
the Biden administration said we could come in, they gave
us this parole. We're just acting in reliance on that.
Now now you're gonna yank us back like that. That's crummy. Now,
I guess my enforcement measures would be anyone who committed
a crime, you're out anyone who's still trying to cross

(34:00):
the border now while the Trump rules are in place,
get out of here. But I don't know that I
love this whole. All of a sudden, Trump's like, oh,
but not not farm workers, because they're really good workers.
No one was disputing that illegal aliens were good workers,
many many, many of them. That the problem was they

(34:22):
were here illegally. And I guess my frustration is that
some sort of business interests, probably Republican aligned business interests,
got to Trump and said, hey, man, you're going to
really hurt businesses here. And I'm guessing what it is.
It's red state or red region farming and hotel conglomerate

(34:51):
types who are Republicans go to Trump and say, hey,
this is really going to hurt our bottom line here,
Which leads me to to this point. This, This is
one of the great injustices of illegal immigration. One of
the big injustices of illegal immigration is it allows huge
corporate entities to get away with paying people terrible wages,

(35:14):
bad benefit back, you know, bad working conditions, bad wages,
and get away with it because oh, you're gonna complain,
how about we get your ass deported? You know, Jose,
I guess the whole, the whole idea that we just
sort of accept that, well, of course we need illegal

(35:36):
aliens to work for our hotels. That just strikes me
that this is not a just system. Then if you know,
this sort of almost like an indentured servitude type situation,
It's it's not quite indentured servitude, But what I'm saying
is this sort of employment situation where you have this
massive upper hand on the person working there that if

(35:59):
they do anything to get out of line, you will
ship their rear end out of here. I mean, that's
the sort of threat that gets implied with these relationships
of industries that are reliant on illegal immigrant labor. So
I find it unsavory that it's sort of all of

(36:22):
a sudden they get Trump's ear and Trump's like, oh, well, well,
of course not farm workers. They're hard working people. Well,
the point here is a lot of the point about
illegal labor is that it's replacing American labor, and all
these are the jobs Americans wouldn't do. Yeah, well Americans

(36:42):
won't do it for illegal alien wages and conditions, and
maybe they shouldn't. Maybe that's not a just thing. So
I can't say I'm overwhelmingly thrilled with this new shift
from Trump. I guess we'll have to see how it

(37:03):
actually plays out when we return. A ridiculous law proposed
by Scott Wiener saying that cops can't have face coverings
next on The John Girardi Show, Scott Wiener the worst
person in all of American politics. A state senator who
represents San Francisco, has announced a new piece of legislation,
the No Secret Police Act SB six twenty seven. In

(37:29):
this bill, he purports to ban local, state, or federal
law enforcement from covering, with some exceptions, from covering their
faces when interacting with the public, and require them to
wear identifying info. All right, if he wants to try
that with California police, go ahead. He has no legal

(37:54):
authority to do that with federal officers, not with ICE,
not with the FBI, not with the military. That is insane. Okay,
this is just basic federalism. State government can't tell federal
officials what to do. Not like that. That'll do it,
John Jolready show see you next time on Power Talk