Trump Uses the Media to Bypass the Media, Outs Democrats on Immigration

We haven’t seen a ton of President Trump’s negotiating prowess so far for probably two reasons: Negotiating politically in D.C. is just flat different from negotiating in business; and Democrats don’t generally want deals — they want to oust Trump. It does, after all, require two sides to want a deal to get a deal.

And that makes Trump’s recent move on immigration not only brilliant, but also shows he is learning how to deal with the general swampiness of D.C. in yet another realm.

First to set the stage. Most conservative observers have seen for years that Democrats are not really interested in any deals involving illegals in the country short of full legalization and citizenship. This always appeared to be one of the calculating strategies for Democrat elections that have little groundings in principles or what is good for Americans: They want illegals in the country — and the issue of illegals — to garner votes for themselves, even if the illegals demonstrably damage lower end working Americans by depressing wages.

Now we have pretty solid evidence to show Democrat’s callous, duplicitous scheming on immigration.

A memo from Jennifer Palmieri, who served as director of communications for President Barack Obama and candidate Hillary Clinton, demands that Democrats go to the wall — so to speak — over the so-called Dreamers of DACA.

“The fight to protect Dreamers is not only a moral imperative, it is also a critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success,” wrote Palmieri, who is now president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, perhaps the most influential Democratic political group. News of the memo distributed Monday was first published in The Daily Caller.

Palmieri, whose memo was sent to Democratic allies around the nation, went on about the political imperative:

“Democrats should refuse to offer any votes for Republican spending bills that do not offer a fix for Dreamers and instead appropriate funds to deport them. Political allegiances are made in moments like these…If Democrats don’t try to do everything in their power to defend Dreamers, that will jeopardize Democrats’ electoral chances in 2018 and beyond. In short, the next few weeks will tell us a lot about the Democratic Party and its long-term electoral prospects,” (Author’s emphasis.)

So what we all suspected is now laid bare, like so much else that has happened since November 2016.

Then, in a move that both outs the Democrats on their dishonesty in all things immigration while at the same time using the media to bypass the media, Trump holds the immigration negotiating meeting with Congressional Republican and Democrat leaders — and let’s the media stay for the entire negotiating session.

Media are typically asked to leave after the photo op moment at the beginning, and then the actual meeting takes place behind closed doors. But Trump simply started the meeting before asking the media to leave and the participants — from both parties — eventually realized that the media were staying. Well, that certainly breaks the mold.

And right from the beginning, Trump asked members from both parties what they want and what they are willing to give up while the cameras were rolling and catching all of it. Since it went out live for some, it is now memorialized all over the internet.

This was brilliant for three reasons:

1. It forced Democrats to actually make proposals rather than play their dishonest games of negotiating in bad faith. Their choice was a real compromise proposal or be revealed.
2. It used the media to bypass the media. The liberal and virulently anti-Trump media consistently reports along liberal lines, covering only those issues or events that appear damaging to Trump while ignoring most of 2017’s successes. This little arrangement used their own cameras to eliminate their filter.
3. It put the lie to all the so-called psychiatrists trotted out by CNN and others to analyze Trump via TV and Twitter and determine he has some mental condition. Obviously his mental faculties are just fine — and perhaps better than most of those opining on him.

The only downside was that Trump said at one point that he would sign whatever the people in that room brought back to him. That sent appropriate shivers through law-and-order Americans as the people in that room are the ones responsible for the mess we have. But Trump knows illegal immigration was one of the primary reasons he was elected. He can deeply influence what is brought back to him to sign, and he will.

RELATED VIDEO: President Trump holds bi-partisan immigration meeting.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act.

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