President Trump refused to back down when challenged by a reporter Wednesday on his use of the word “invasion” to describe massive illegal immigration at the U.S. border with Mexico.
Trump was taking questions on the South Lawn of the White House as he headed to Dayton and El Paso to pay respects following the deadly mass shootings in those cities last weekend.
Trunp’s stand was echoed by senior administration aide Kellyanne Conway and senior campaign official Tim Murtaugh in separate interviews.
Transcript of Trump’s remarks via the White House:
Q Mr. President, do you still believe that illegal immigration into this country is an invasion? You and the shooter in El Paso used that same language. Do you regret that?
THE PRESIDENT: I think that illegal immigration — you’re talking about illegal immigration, right? Yeah? I think illegal immigration is a terrible thing for this country. I think you have to come in legally. Ideally, you have to come in through merit. We need people coming in because we have many companies coming into our country. They’re pouring in. And I think illegal immigration is a very bad thing for our country. I think open borders are a very bad thing for our country.
And we’re stopping; we’re building a wall right now. We won the lawsuit in the Supreme Court two weeks ago. The wall is well under construction. It’s being built at a rapid pace. We need that. We need strong immigration laws. But we want to allow millions of people to come in because we need them. We have companies coming in from Japan, all over Europe, all over Asia. They’re opening up companies here. They need people to work. We have a very low unemployment rate.
So, I believe we have to have legal immigration, not illegal immigration.
Video via MSNBC:
Kellyanne Conway was interviewed by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and like the President did not back down.
Kellyanne Conway was confronted about Trump’s hateful 'invasion' rhetoric by reporter Christiane Amanpour — but she refused to take any responsibility pic.twitter.com/DGrawBoa7n
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 7, 2019
Murtaugh was quoted by the New York Times as not backing down, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent was stunned to report:
1) The Trump campaign is refusing to stop using the term “invasion” to depict migrants in its TV ads, the NYT reports.
This comes after the alleged El Paso shooter used the same word.
Incredibly, a Trump spox is calling this word "accurate."
*THREAD*https://t.co/2Mkvsj0nNb pic.twitter.com/QtIh9MOrkt
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) August 7, 2019
Steadfastness in his beliefs in the face of withering press attacks is why Donald Trump won the Republican nomination and the presidency in 2016–and is headed to likely reelection in 2020.
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