What does a Trump shill do when she doesn’t want to defend his cruel threat to deport Dreamers by repealing DACA? If you’re Fox’s Harris Faulkner, you blame Barack Obama.

Wearing her supposedly “objective anchor” hat on America’s News HQ this Tuesday afternoon, Trumper Faulkner moderated a discussion about the Trump administration’s repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program which had allowed children of undocumented immigrants, the so-called Dreamers, to avoid deportation and to work and go to school in the U.S.

Rather than defend Trump’s decision to cause chaos, stress and fear to 800,000 young Americans who did not come here by choice – not to mention the possible hundreds of billions of dollars the repeal may cost the country – Faulkner and her conservative guest, Vince Coglianese pandered to their audience by attacking Democrats.

Coglianese got the hate mongering started by pre-blaming Democrats who may not go along with Trump’s immigration blackmail coming down the pike:

COGLIANESE: Democrats are going to have a tough time explaining to their constituents why they didn’t vote to make DACA permanent when that law finally comes up for a vote in Congress.

But that didn’t quite “exonerate” Trump’s actions enough for Faulkner in the here and now, apparently. She specifically blamed his repeal on Obama as she spoke to Democrat Simon Rosenberg.

FAULKNER: Attorney General Jeff Sessions just reminded us today, Simon, of the fact that this was never intended to be a long-term fix, the DACA program. He said that the Justice Department has looked at the legislation or the executive order that President Obama put through. And says that, “Look, it conflicts with immigration law. It just doesn’t work.” So they would need to do something anyway.

Rosenberg did what I think all Fox guests should do: He refused to be boxed into Fox’s framing of the debate. That clearly unnerved Faulkner and she loudly interrupted. But Rosenberg did the next right thing: he refused to to be interrupted.

ROSENBERG: I just want to say, as many have said today, that I’m deeply disappointed in the decision. There are millions of people whose lives are going to be uprooted now and I do think – I’m not gonna address the question that was raised, the decision’s been made, right? We’re moving on now. I don’t agree [Faulkner tried, and failed, to interrupt here] with the legal rationale behind it.

So Faulkner moved on to blame Democrats, in general, for Trump’s repeal.

FAULKNER: I haven’t been able to ask anyone in your party this today and I’m really curious. If you knew that this wasn’t a permanent solution, and you’re letting children in illegally, and they’re now growing up and growing up in America, the only country they’ve ever known as Speaker Paul Ryan put it – if you knew this was the case, why didn’t Democrats try to fix this before we got to this point? They knew it wasn’t permanent.

Unfortunately for Faulkner, Rosenberg smacked that down, too.

ROSENBERG: Well, we did, actually… In 2013, we passed a bill, a bipartisan bill through the Senate that would have fixed this and the House Republicans blocked it. So we actually did try to fix it.

Rosenberg was correct about that.

Rosenberg went on to say that it’s crucial for Trump to get involved and to lay down his own parameters for a bill to replace DACA because members of Congress will not want to stick their necks out over a bill that could be vetoed.

Coglianese began pre-blaming Democrats again for any failures of the bill but now credited Trump for any success:

COGLIANESE: If Congress can’t fix it, then I think Democrats ultimately are going to have to answer why they couldn’t come to the table to bring those votes.

Whether or not Republicans split, I mean, that’s kind of a foregone conclusion. Expect some Republicans to defect because they see this as an amnesty that shouldn’t be voted for. But Democrats en masse are likely to vote for this so long as they’re under pressure from their constituents to do so. And right now, President Obama has given President Trump massive leverage. Who would think that President Trump would be the one to bring a comprehensive immigration reform of any kind into the table and suddenly, he’s in a position to do it.

Faulkner murmured her approval and appreciation.

Watch the "heads, Democrats lose; tails, Trump wins" rhetoric above, from the September 5, 2017 America’s News HQ.

Crossposted at News Hounds.
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