CNN Panel Rips Trump's Mexico Deal, Calls It a Distraction from Jobs Report
A panel on CNN appeared to be unimpressed with President Donald Trump’s announcement that the U.S. and Mexico had come to an agreement regarding trade and immigration, with one member of the panel calling the negotiation process “theater.”
Trump announced Friday that Mexico would be taking action to stem the flow of illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S., in return for the U.S. pulling back its threat of a blanket tariff on all Mexican imports.
“I am pleased to inform you that The United States of America has reached a signed agreement with Mexico. The Tariffs scheduled to be implemented by the U.S. on Monday, against Mexico, are hereby indefinitely suspended,” Trump tweeted Friday.
I am pleased to inform you that The United States of America has reached a signed agreement with Mexico. The Tariffs scheduled to be implemented by the U.S. on Monday, against Mexico, are hereby indefinitely suspended. Mexico, in turn, has agreed to take strong measures to….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 8, 2019
“Mexico, in turn, has agreed to take strong measures to … stem the tide of Migration through Mexico, and to our Southern Border,” the president added.
….stem the tide of Migration through Mexico, and to our Southern Border. This is being done to greatly reduce, or eliminate, Illegal Immigration coming from Mexico and into the United States. Details of the agreement will be released shortly by the State Department. Thank you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 8, 2019
“This is being done to greatly reduce, or eliminate, Illegal Immigration coming from Mexico and into the United States,” Trump tweeted. “Details of the agreement will be released shortly by the State Department. Thank you!”
However, for a Friday panel at CNN hosted by anchor Don Lemon, this wasn’t good enough, as Fox News pointed out.
Former Republican Rep. Charlie Dent, for one, seemed to think Trump was trying to redirect attention away from the May jobs report. That report showed “the U.S. economy added just 75,000 jobs last month, far fewer than the 180,000 increase expected by economists polled by Dow Jones,” CNBC reported.
Lemon asked Dent if he felt like Trump’s announcement of a deal with Mexico was supposed to distract from the jobs report.
“I do,” Dent said. “The jobs report clearly was not what anybody wanted.”
Dent also said earlier in the segment that Trump’s threat of tariffs was a bluff.
“Nobody really knows what the deal is, but I thought this was a little bit more bluster than anything else,” Dent told the other members of the panel.
He said Trump would have never gone through with the tariff threat because it would hurt red-leaning states like Texas that share a border with Mexico.
CNN global affairs analyst Susan Glasser chimed in as well, calling the negotiations a “fake game” of “Let’s Stick Up the Neighbors.”
“To me,” she said, “it’s such a predictable play here because we’ve seen President Trump run it so many times before.”
Glasser went on to ask, “At the beginning of the week, how many people in Washington thought this is exactly where we would be on Friday night?”
“I think everybody did,” Lemon responded.
Glasser then criticized Trump’s tariff threat as “underscor[ing] the complete lack of anything like a normal policy process” and claimed “the whole thing was sort of a theater.”
Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio then jumped into the mix, saying these negotiations were no “art of the deal.”
D’Antonio, who’s a CNN contributor, said the State Department must have “locked up” the Mexican delegation “to keep them there for nine or ten hours” and then “let them out and … said, ‘Well, the problem is solved.'”
“We just have this solution that nobody understands,” he said, “and that won’t produce what the president actually promised, which was a big, beautiful wall that Mexico would pay for.”
Lemon asked D’Antonio if he thought this move had anything to do with Trump’s upcoming re-election bid. “Is this all about reelection?” Lemon asked.
“Of course it is,” D’Antonio replied.
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