Sen. Lindsey Graham really wanted to talk about anything other than Trump’s promise to bring inflation down during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union this Sunday.
Host Dana Bash asked Graham about Trump’s executive orders, and the fact that none of them dealt with what was supposedly one of the most important issues for voters the last election, which was the “crisis of affordability.”
“People are now paying $7 for a dozen eggs. It’s a record level, 37 percent higher than a year ago,” Bash pointed out to Graham. “Are his priorities in the right place?”
“Well, I was pretty involved in the last campaign. For every time he talked about eggs, he talked about illegal immigration 1,000 times,” Graham replied.
“I think he’s trying to fulfill his promise to regain control of an out-of-control illegal immigration system. We need more money for Tom Homan. I’m for departing illegal immigrants here who are criminals. Most people are. The public’s with him. But if you don’t get new money into the system, Tom Homan can’t do his job,” Graham continued.
“We need more bed space. We need to finish the wall. But I think the signature issue for Donald Trump was to get a handle on illegal immigration, and he’s off to a good start. We just need to help him in Congress.”
Bash, of course, did not point out that Trump and Homan’s mass deportation plans and Trump’s his tariffs are only going to make inflation worse, and instead noted that Graham was correct that Trump talked about the immigration nonstop on the campaign trail.
After Bash reminded Graham that the issues of the economy and inflation polled “way higher” than immigration, Graham again downplayed those concerns.
“I think the majority of the people in that poll say they’re — they support deporting everybody who came to the country illegally in the four years of Biden,” Graham replied. “Like, 70 percent, almost 80 percent support deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crime. The public is with him on this. And if you all don’t get this by now, you missed the entire campaign, but I will leave that up to people here in Washington.”
Rather than push back on Graham’s deflection, Bash asked him to elaborate on what he was saying about needing more money on immigration, and allowed Graham to carry on about all the money Congress needs to appropriate so Trump can build his private prisons to house all the migrants they round up.
GRAHAM: Yes, I think this whole debate in the Republican Party, do you need one bill or two, right now, Tom Homan needs more money to hire ICE agents. He needs more money to finish the wall, to increase bed space.
He doesn’t have the tools necessary to carry out this plan that President Trump gave him until Congress appropriates more money. So, to my Republican colleagues, we have hit a wall here. We’re not building a wall. We have hit a wall.
We need to appropriate money to Tom Homan so he can do what President Trump promised. And if we delay it, the taxes expire in December. We have got plenty of time to deal with that. I worry that we’re going to own another attack on our country. I worry that we’re delaying this plan that President Trump ran on if the Congress doesn’t give his administration, Tom Homan the money to do the plan that he promised, that President Trump promised.
We need to come together quickly on this, in my view.
