Former Koch Brothers Exec, Now White House Staffer, Marc Short: Trump ‘Willing to Expand’ DACA Amnesty

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AP Photo/Alex Brandon
John Binder
Washington, D.C.

Former “Never Trump” Koch brothers executive turned White House staffer, Marc Short, told NBC’s Meet the Press that President Trump would be “willing to expand” an amnesty beyond the nearly 800,000 illegal aliens shielded from deportation by the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

During an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd, Short made the claim that in negotiations to give reward illegal aliens with amnesty, Trump would be “willing” to give a pathway to U.S. citizenship or permanent legal status to not just the nearly 800,000 DACA illegal aliens enrolled in the program, but also the illegal aliens who are eligible for DACA, an unlawful population that would mean 3.5 million illegal aliens being given amnesty.

The Meet the Press exchange went as follows:

MARC SHORT: Things that need to be clarified on that because sometimes what Democrats have done is say they’ll authorize it without appropriating it which is a game here. Democrats have voted before to authorize lots of money that never happens. So we need to clarify that. But we see progress. On our side they said they want the 690,000 DACA population expanded. Senator Durbin has made the case that say many people did not register and they should not be held harmful. We’ve been willing to expand that population. So there’s progress happening here which, again, leads us, Chuck, so then why are we shutting down the government? [Emphasis added]

CHUCK TODD: Well, I guess then—Graham/Durbin say that they put this offer out here. Now you’ve got Chuck Schumer saying it. So why not, why not say, “Okay, it seems like we have the parameters for a deal.” Democrats are willing. You guys are arguing over whether you’re going to appropriate it or not. But it seems as if what they thought—Chuck Schumer says what he thought he had an agreement of that the president changed his mind a few hours later. I guess the question I have for you is who’s in charge of the president’s position on immigration because what he—look at Lindsey Graham. There was two—he calls him Tuesday Trump versus Thursday Trump. What’s the difference here?

MARC SHORT: President Trump is being crystal clear on what he wants and he has not wavered in that, Chuck. What Lindsey Graham and Senator Durbin offered to the president was to say, “Here, we’ve narrowed it down to these four areas you’ve asked us to.” When they came over to the White House and presented them we found them to be woefully insufficient inside those four areas. But nonetheless we had narrowed down the broader debate into a smaller one. We feel like we are making progress on the overall discussion. We think we will get to a solution. What befuddles is to say we’re going to not pay millions of our troops serving around the world. And we’re not going to pay our border agents until, until what—we don’t know what it is they’re asking for. They’ve said, “Give us a shorter CR.” Tonight the Senate Republicans vote, instead of a four-week CR on a three-week CR. And yet Democrats are still are unwilling to give us their vote to keep the government open.

Last week, Senate Democrats, along with Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), voted to shut down the federal government because the spending bill to keep the government running did not include amnesty for illegal aliens.

Under the Flake-Graham-Sen. Durbin (D-IL) “Gang of Six” amnesty plan that Democrats and the Republican establishment want to be passed in order to reopen the government, at least 3.5 million illegal aliens who are enrolled and eligible for the DACA program would be given amnesty, as Breitbart News reported.

Additionally, the Flake-Graham-Durbin amnesty would reward the illegal alien parents of DACA illegal aliens with amnesty as well, along with giving amnesty to about 50,000 foreign nationals a year through two separate visa programs.

Short’s statement does not align with populist conservative Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) statement on Saturday that Trump’s standpoint on immigration has “not withheld or shifted its position” on immigration, where the White House has consistently said they would be open to amnesty for only illegal aliens enrolled in DACA if they were given a slew of pro-American immigration reforms in return.

The reforms Trump has been demanding for months include full funding for a border wall, an end to the process of “chain migration,” and an end to the Diversity Visa Lottery program. According to the White House’s longstanding position, these reforms would be in exchange for legal status for only illegal aliens enrolled in the DACA program.

Under the current legal immigration system, more than 70 percent of all immigration to the U.S. come from chain migration, whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country with them.

In an explosive report, Breitbart News revealed that chain migration, if not ended, is expected to add between seven and eight million new foreign-born voters to the U.S. electorate—a scheme that favors Democrats, as immigrants, specifically Hispanics and Asians, vote 2-to-1 for Democrats over Republicans.

Since 2005, chain migration has imported more than nine million foreign nationals to the U.S., making it the largest driver of immigration—more than 70 percent of all legal immigration. As Breitbart News reported, five years of chain migration to the U.S. adds more people to the country than one year of American births.

Additionally, should current legal immigration policy remain the same for the next 50 years, 100 million foreign-born people will be added to the U.S. population, Breitbart News reported.

Likewise, the Visa Lottery, which Trump has demanded an end to, randomly imports 50,000 foreign nationals every year from a multitude of countries, including those with known terrorism problems—such as Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Yemen, and Uzbekistan.

Most recently, the Visa Lottery made national headlines when it was revealed that suspected ISIS-inspired New York City terrorist, Uzbek national 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov, who is accused of murdering at least eight individuals, entered the U.S. in 2010 by winning one of the 50,000 visas randomly allotted in the program.

A Pulse Opinion Research poll conducted this month found that 60 percent of American likely voters wanted to see the Visa Lottery ended, as Trump has demanded. The same poll also found that nearly 60 percent of likely voters want to see chain migration ended as part of any immigration deal.

Since September 2017, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the DACA program would officially end in March 2018, Short has been pushing the White House to accept amnesty for illegal aliens, Breitbart News noted.

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.”

The Koch brothers, as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Mark Zuckerberg’s cheap labor organization, and the open borders lobby have all demanded an immediate amnesty for millions of illegal aliens who are enrolled and eligible for DACA.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

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