MSNBC’s Díaz-Balart Grills Obama: Did You Delay on Immigration for Politics?

During tonight’s MSNBC/Telemundo town hall on immigration, José Díaz-Balart pressed President Obama on why his administration took several years before taking significant action on immigration, even asking if there were “political implications” behind the decision.

Díaz-Balart told Obama he keeps getting lots of questions from people about why the president “really didn’t fight for immigration” when he had majorities in both houses of Congress. Obama, betraying some frustration, said, “I don’t know if anybody remembers, José, that when I took office and I had a majority, we had the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The global economy was collapsing.”

RELATED: Jorge Ramos Confronts Obama for Flip-Flopping on Immigration Action

Obama insisted that contrary to what some might think, they were working like hell to fix the economy and weren’t just “sitting back not doing anything.” Díaz-Balart brought up how the White House still pushed the Affordable Care Act in the first term, though.

The president said he wanted immigration done from the beginning but “ultimately we could not get the votes to get it all done.” And as for the question about getting Obamacare done but not immigration, the Obama said he would have loved to get everything done in the first few years, but the reality is “some things are politically more difficult.”

Watch the video below, via MSNBC:

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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