Recall last Wednesday’s meeting among President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R, CA), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY), Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D, IL), Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and others.
Nielsen was there to present the current situation on our southern border as prelude to negotiations for funding for a border wall.
Pelosi refused to listen. As Nielsen was laying out statistics related to illegal border crossings, Pelosi interrupted (among several interruptions by her and by Schumer, as they refused to listen):
I reject your facts[.]
Never mind that facts belong to no one; they exist in their own right.
Durbin also rejected simple facts.
It was preposterous. At a time when we have the lowest level of apprehensions at the border—stopping people from coming in illegally—the lowest level historically, she is saying that we have all these terrorists and criminals and all these people on their way in.
As if per centages of criminals or terrorists won’t change—reductions in total apprehensions must mean there are fewer criminals or terrorists, thugs with entirely different goals in gaining entry, persons who by their nature want to hide the fact of their entry must drop by the same proportion.
Durbin knows better; he’s being disingenuous with his distortion.
And, as Pelosi said that Wednesday
This is not a wall between the United States and Mexico that the President is creating here. It’s a wall between reality and his constituents.
Progressive-Democrats really do have nothing but contempt for the hundreds of millions of Americans, including the tens of millions of eligible voters who voted Republican in 2016, who disagree with them.
How is it possible to negotiate anything with persons who run screaming from the underlying facts? How is it possible to negotiate anything with persons who won’t accept the reality underlying the negotiations?
Keep this in mind over the next couple of years, and especially over the summer and fall of 2020.