By Jon Dougherty
The White House pushed back in a big way Monday against Democrats and their sycophants in the Left-wing legacy media over claims that POTUS Donald Trump’s trade-and-immigration deal with Mexico was ‘in the works for months’ and had nothing to do with his tariff threat.
Over the weekend, POTUS announced that a deal had been reached with Mexico thus eliminating the need to impose a 5-percent tariff on all imports beginning today, as he had threatened:
I am pleased to inform you that The United States of America has reached a signed agreement with Mexico. The Tariffs scheduled to be implemented by the U.S. on Monday, against Mexico, are hereby indefinitely suspended. Mexico, in turn, has agreed to take strong measures to….stem the tide of Migration through Mexico, and to our Southern Border. This is being done to greatly reduce, or eliminate, Illegal Immigration coming from Mexico and into the United States. Details of the agreement will be released shortly by the State Department. Thank you!
Included in the deal is Mexico’s agreement to impose a number of security measures that began Friday with the deployment of 6,000 troops to its southern border as a means of stopping endless migrant caravans that have been traipsing through the country on their way to the United States.
Democrats panned the agreement.
“President Trump undermined America’s preeminent leadership role in the world by recklessly threatening to impose tariffs on our close friend and neighbor to the south,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi complained on Saturday.
As Newsweek reported:
Of particular concern to Pelosi was the agreement’s expansion of what has become known as the “Remain-in-Mexico” policy, which seeks to keep asylum-seeking Central American migrants on the Mexico side of the border until after U.S. officials have determined their eligibility to migrate to America.
Pelosi said she was “deeply disappointed” by this expansion, claiming it “violates the rights of asylum seekers under U.S. law and fails to address the root causes of Central American migration.”
The Remain-in-Mexico program is the subject of an ongoing legal challenge. It was initially put on hold by a federal judge, but an appeals court subsequently allowed the policy to continue.
Pelosi continued by implying that Trump had overstepped his authority and acted where Congress ought to have.
“President Trump must stop sabotaging good-faith, constructive, and bipartisan efforts in Congress to address this complex problem in a humane manner that honors and respects our most cherished national values,” she wrote.
Pelosi continued: “The Trump Administration must also do much more to cooperate in a meaningful way with Mexico in cracking down on smuggling networks. Its failure to do so thus far is unconscionable and irresponsible.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer complained as well:
Worse, fake news central — The New York Times — claimed that nothing the president did was ‘new’ and that elements of the deal he made were agreed to “months ago” by Mexico:
The deal to avert tariffs that President Trump announced with great fanfare on Friday night consists largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with the United States over the past several months, according to officials from both countries who are familiar with the negotiations.
Naturally, the paper once again used “anonymous” sources to make these claims, which have no basis in fact, given what Border Patrol, ICE, and Homeland Security officials have said about the deal, which is this: It took the president’s tariff threats to get a deal signed.
It’s ironic that congressional Democrats are complaining about the president’s progress with Mexico, given that they’ve done absolutely nothing to help the administration protect our borders and protect our citizens.
And presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway let them know it.
“Mexico took the President’s tariff threat very seriously and they’re starting to take enforcement of their southern border seriously. This is important to both countries. We now have Mexico doing more than the Democrats who work behind me on Capitol Hill on securing our southern border,” Conway said.
She also noted that Congress can fix the asylum loopholes and other problems with immigration law that serve as magnets for illegal immigration, but have refused to do so because they’d rather encumber this president and enable drug and human smugglers.
This story was first published on TheNationalSentinel.com
