The press sure loves pre-written narratives for their content. One would hope following a Trump victory and the subsequent media meltdown, that the journalists of this nation might rethink their strategies and conjure up a new anti-Trump gameplan. Nope, it’s the same old tired talking points from the resistance news complex. “Weaponizing the DOJ,” “Loyal authoritarians nominated,” “Tariffs cause inflation,” and many other tired bromides are being echoed these days since the election.
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And others involve immigration. NBC’s Kristen Welker, on “Meet The Press,” trotted out the exhausted argument that deportations are too costly. This of course ignores the cost of processing, caring, and supplying those same immigrants, as well as pretending there is no expense for Joe Biden to fly them into the country! Also, Joe Biden’s administration has actually shipped out more illegal immigrants than Trump during his first term, and we hear nary a complaint about that expense.
Another favored narrative regarding these immigrants was just heard from CNN’s Jake Tapper, and this is the dismissive script line that they are needed in order to maintain the nation’s food supply. Watch his casual racism as he basically reverts to the problematic version of, “If we deport minorities, who will pick our cotton??”
CNN’s Jake Tapper: “Who’s having a meltdown [about Trump deporting farm workers]?”@ScottJenningsKY: “Uhhhh — I mean, everybody seems to be on the same sheet of music today that this is going to mess up the agriculture industry and drive the grocery prices higher. I’ve seen… pic.twitter.com/MMQIBphssn
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) November 18, 2024
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There is so much wrong with this stunted thinking, beyond the base racial undertones. Jake, and those others in the press, need to ignore the layers of illicit activity involved. Not only are these people who entered the country illegally, but he is promoting the illegal business behavior of hiring undocumented workers. The people who love to rail against exploitive corporate behavior seem unbothered when it is foreigners exploited in the fields.
And this runs into another inherent contradiction from the left. The push for minimum wage increases and a “livable income” seems to halt once the agrarian fields are in play. The $15-$20-$25 lobbying stops and suddenly cheap labor is considered noble.
And this is not the end of the lack of common sense. This argument needs to suggest our food supply was strained and not functioning until there was this surge of immigrants the past few years, a complete dose of fiction. Further, Jake’s example of egg prices being modulated by this needed supply of fieldhands falls apart under contemporary facts. Over the past few years, egg prices have spiked to nearly double the pre-pandemic cost, and yet this occurred during the historical wave of “agriculture workers” streaming across the border during the Biden administration.
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What is entertaining to watch is that as Tapper and others in the press ecosystem unfurl this tired narrative, they do so reflexively in response to Trump, ignorant of what they are promoting. Like so many of their emotional tropes to oppose him, in the end they do not realize how much they need to oppose their own prior narratives.
