In an interview with George Stephanopoulos for the ABC News show “This Week,” President Obama decided to directly address Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to deport all illegal immigrants and also discussed why the GOP seems to constantly deal in hatred and division.
The sheer cost of Trump’s plan is unrealistic, the President said:
“The notion we’re going to deport 11, 12 million people from this country…first of all, I’ve no idea where Mr. Trump thinks the money’s going to come from. It would cost us hundreds of billions of dollars to execute that.”
The President also noted that a move to deport millions of people would ruin the image of the United States around the world:
“Imagine the images on the screen flashed around the world, as we were dragging parents away from their children and putting them in, what, detention centers, and then systematically sending them out. Nobody thinks that is realistic. But more importantly, that’s not who we are as Americans.”
Stephanopoulos asked: Then why do so many Americans cheer Trump when he says the things he does? To which the Presdient replied:
“There’s always been a strain of anti-immigrant sentiment in America.”
As the hatred and vile remarks made by some on the Republican side, Obama said leaders are supposed to rise above such pettiness:
“It’s the job of leaders not to play into that sentiment.”
Leadership is clearly not something the GOP excels at. They are far too busy going on Fox News every ten minutes and railing against socialism, Islam, and a nonexistent war on Christians. Which is why they are becoming more marginalized with each passing day and are also on their way to being a permanent minority party within the next decade.
Featured image by Flickr, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
