WH’s Palmieri on Obama Amnesty: ‘It Doesn’t Tear Up the Constitution’

On Thursday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, Obama administration adviser Jennifer Palmieri defended President Barack Obama’s anticipated executive amnesty action scheduled to be made official later this week.

Palmieri argued against a Washington Post editorial making the argument that Obama’s actions will “tear up the Constitution.”

“It doesn’t tear up the Constitution. And you will see — everyone will see that it doesn’t,” she said. “[W]e’re not concerned about that. The president will announce what he’s doing tonight and we will explain it and people can look at the legal justification and make that determination. But this is not about the president’s frustration with Congress. There are — you know, there are, like I said, there are millions of people that we can help right now, begin to solve the problem.”

“It’s been two years,” Palmieri continued. “There’s just not any credible reason to ask these people to continue to wait and you know Congress has free will. They can pick up and the legislation or add other legislation and act whenever they like. The president wants to work to do that. But at this point the president just feels like he has to act to solve the small part because there are going to be people that are disappointed because we won’t solve the problem.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor