President Trump’s Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short insinuated during a Christian Scientist Monitor breakfast in Washington, DC, that the administration would not demand any pro-American immigration reforms in exchange for amnesty for nearly 800,000 illegal aliens given temporary protected status.
Regarding the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens shielded by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program – which Trump will officially end – Short hinted that the administration will accept a clean amnesty bill from Congress that would not only legalize DACA recipients, but also create a surge at the U.S.-Mexico border and a surge in legal immigration to the U.S.
“We are most interested in getting border security, and the president has made a commitment to the American people that he believes that a physical barrier is important to that equation of border security,” Short said during the breakfast.
“Whether or not that is part of a DACA equation or whether or not that’s another legislative vehicle, I don’t want to bind ourselves into a construct that makes reaching a conclusion on DACA impossible,” Short said:
Marc Short on #borderwall: "I don't want us to bind ourselves into a construct that makes reaching a conclusion on #DACA impossible. pic.twitter.com/zdBUdgYwge
— CSPAN (@cspan) September 12, 2017
Rather than the administration’s demanding cuts to legal immigration and mandatory E-Verify to end the practice of businesses hiring illegal aliens, Short brought up tax cuts, saying, “It is essential to us — right now.”
Despite now being a part of the Trump administration, Short has a long history opposing the president and his agenda, as well as working alongside the Koch brothers, two pro-mass immigration billionaires who are major donors to the Republican establishment, as the director of the group Freedom Partners.
In May 2016, during the height of the Republican presidential primary, where Trump was taking the country by storm on his populist-nationalist “America First” agenda, Short was heading an effort to derail the then-front-runner.
At the time, National Review exclusively reported that Short was leading an effort inside the Koch brothers’ organizations to take down Trump and his agenda, partly by supporting Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who infamously helped author the Gang of Eight amnesty bill that would have given the 12 to 30 million illegal aliens in the U.S. a pathway to citizenship:
On a frigid Tuesday in February, a team of top political operatives from the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the umbrella group that controls political activities for the sprawling donor network led by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, arrived in Kansas for a meeting that they hoped would turn the tide of the presidential campaign.
They’d set aside $150 million to spend on paid media alone, to be spread across campaigns at the federal, state, and local levels. Yet they had not been authorized to spend a dime on the White House race.
Marc Short, then president of Freedom Partners, wanted to change that. He led a faction inside the Koch network that had become convinced of the need to neutralize Donald Trump before his momentum made him unstoppable. Fresh off Trump’s landslide victory in New Hampshire one week earlier, and staring down another likely Trump win in South Carolina that Saturday, Short and his lieutenants had come to Wichita to present Charles Koch with a detailed, eight-figure blueprint for derailing the Republican front-runner on Super Tuesday, when eleven states would vote. They hoped to get the green light to hammer Trump with ads in the states where he was most vulnerable.
Just a week after Short’s efforts to lead a full-fledged Koch-funded operation against Trump, he signed onto the Rubio campaign.
After Short left the Koch’s Freedom Partners, he praised the open borders, billionaire donors, saying, “Charles and David have built an amazing network of donors and activists, and their investments in future generations will pay huge dividends.”
Despite his past efforts to defeat Trump, Short waged his way into the president’s White House, now making headlines for his push for DACA amnesty without any cuts to legal immigration or mandatory E-Verify for businesses.
As Breitbart News reported, the Koch brothers have lined up with the open borders lobby and corporate interests to demand amnesty for DACA recipients and are pushing members of the GOP to quickly pass amnesty for illegal aliens.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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