Former Bush Operative Perino Melts Down Over Trump’s Mainstream Immigration Plan

Fox News Channel host Dana Perino slammed GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s immigration plan as “totally unworkable, and impractical” on Monday’s broadcast of “The Five.”

After fellow panelist Jesse Watters stated, “I love how Chuck Todd’s out there, sitting, whining about where are these deported illegal aliens going to go, where are they gonna go? Hey, Chuck, why don’t you put them up in your place? Right? I mean, he’s got room. He’s a compassionate guy. He’s probably got a big mansion. So, I don’t know why he’s advocating for that. … Here’s what we do with them, maybe we send them down to the border. Maybe the illegal alien families build the wall. Then when the wall’s finished, then they get amnesty. That’s called earned amnesty. … It’s going to be a trail of tears. But here’s the plan, it’s a simple plan. Protect the border, protect the families, protect jobs. And I don’t buy the whole crocodile tears from these liberals, oh, you know, ‘What’s going to happen?’ We know what they think is going to happen. We saw what Kelly Osbourne said. … They think of these people as servants. And you what? If these Mexican women were coming to this country legally, and having babies, and these babies were growing up to vote Republican, the Democrats would be building a bigger wall than Trump.”

Perino said, “This has been my problem from the beginning. It sounds good, and it’s totally unworkable, and impractical, and it will never happen. And you’re selling people a bill of goods to make them feel better. You’re not going to bring back all the jobs from China. The Mexicans are not going to build the wall…they’re not going to do it. And we’re — and the other thing is, the DREAM Act, when President Obama signed that, I think the approval rating for that was something near 70%. And I thought at the time, ‘Who in the future, would ever try to take this back?’ And I thought, ‘No Republican candidate is ever going to do that.’ It can only be — it could only stay. Now you have President Trump — maybe that’s a Freudian slip, saying that he would — just trust him, it’s going to happen. I would love to see you and you [pointing at Watters and Tom Shillue] have to go find some families, round them up, and say, ‘Sorry, I know you’ve been here for several years. I know your children were born here in the Bronx. But you, you’re from Costa Rica. You’re all out of here.’ And the — and I would love to see you two have to go and do that, because I don’t want any federal government employee to have to do, what is so asinine that you guys are coming up with.”

After Watters said that he believes that the courts will throw out the president’s executive action, Perino stated that they wouldn’t. She continued, “Let’s talk about the judicial system for a second. He’s suggesting basically doing away with birthright citizenship. Okay, so you’re telling people in America we’re going to end that. That actually — it’s not easy, one of the things that drives people crazy about President Obama is the imperial presidency.”

Watters then stated, “Are you surprised that a politician is saying he’s going to do things in a primary, and maybe not — doesn’t when he’s president? This happens all the time.” Perino then asked if Watters believed the Supreme Court is going overturn birthright citizenship. He responded that he doesn’t believe so, and said, “It’s lip service.”

After Perino asked Watters if he’s okay with that, he answered, “Every single politician says that. I’m not surprised by these guys. This is what they do. This is how they get elected.”

Perino asked, “Right. But you’re in journalism. Don’t you want to hold people — ?” Watters re-iterated that he didn’t believe Trump would rescind birthright citizenship. Perino asked why he was still praising Trump, to which Watters said he likes “the border plan,” “defunding sanctuary cities,” and “bolstering the manpower of ICE.” Perino agreed that “There’s a lot in there that people could support.” But said to Watters, “That’s not what you said, though. What you said is that you’re for rounding up the families.” After some crosstalk, Watters said, “I said they could sleep at Chuck Todd’s house.”

Later, after Shillue said that people think Trump could impact policy discussion, Perino said, “I can see that. I agree with that. I actually think there’s something that Donald Trump could do that would even be more effective, which is to talk about — if he wants to talk about African-American youth unemployment, there’s actually two liberal policies that have really lead and exacerbated it. And the first one is, minimum wage laws, that have ratcheted up so much, that, if you’re in a state, and you have a choice between buying a robot, or hiring two teens, you choose the robot, because it’s just economics. The second thing is, the negative consequences of Obamacare, and the part-time worker issue has really exacerbated the African-American unemployment issue. So, I think there are things that he could actually talk about.”

Perino concluded the discussion by recommending Alex Nowrasteh’s piece in The Federalist on Trump’s immigration policy.

Follow Breitbart News on Twitter @BreitbartNews

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.