There were five official presidential candidates in tonight’s GOP debate, but six debaters. The sixth was a female reporter from Telemundo.
She was running a single-issue campaign. Her issue was relief for illegal immigrants. Her performance was nauseating.
The Telemundo woman, María Celeste Arrarás, asked the candidates this question: “Do you [or your fellow candidates] get it?” By “it,” as she made clear in a speech masquerading as a question, Arrasa meant the need to pander to Hispanics on the issue of illegal immigration.
Even under the slack standards and biased practices of the left-liberal mainstream media, it should be unacceptable for journalists asking questions at a debate to stake out a substantive position and then ask the candidates whether they “get it.” The job of journalists in this context (and others) is to ask for the candidates’ position, not (in effect) to instruct them and the audience that they are clueless if they don’t agree with the position the journalist happens to take.
Arrarás was so single-mindedly driven by her immigration agenda that she returned to it long after the debate, by a pre-arranged plan, had moved on to other issues. This time, the Telemundo woman wanted to know why the candidates don’t favor a wall along the U.S.-Canadian border.
Mexico, she implied, is being singled out unfairly. Hispanics, she seems to believe, are discriminated against if, due to a wall, it’s more difficult for them than for Canadians to sneak into the U.S. illegally.
Donald Trump swatted this question away by noting that (1) our border with Canada is much longer than the one with Mexico, making a wall much less feasible, (2) illegal immigration across the Mexican border is a much bigger problem, in general, than illegal immigration from Canada, and (3) much of the heroin that’s plaguing our country is coming in from Mexico.
It was a good answer. I wonder whether Arrarás now gets it.
Anyone who doubts that granting citizenship to illegal immigrants will harm the quality of our governance should keep this fact in mind: a great many of these new citizens will get their news and political information from people like María Celeste Arrarás.
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