Fox & Friends Interview With Obama DHS Sec is Surprisingly the Best Border Crisis Segment You’ll See on Cable News

When it comes to coverage of the border crisis, Fox & Friends typically tilts toward partisan anger and fear-mongering of the once mocked but now-prescient “migrant caravan” obsession. But Thursday morning’s interview with former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson was as thoughtful and compelling a discussion about a highly complex issue you may ever see on cable news.

Johnson served as Department of Homeland Security under former President Barack Obama and can proudly tout a notable reduction of undocumented migrants during his tenure. He faced a largely skeptical troika of Fox & Friends co-hosts — Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, and Brian Kilmeade. (The fourth member of the cast, Lawrence Jones, was not in the studio as he was reporting near the Texas border with Mexico awaiting the arrival of former President Donald Trump — who is visiting the very same day as President Joe Biden.)

The lengthy interview lasted over 17 minutes and is better watched in full than summarized here. Highlights include Johnson’s pushing back on Earhardt’s claim that Biden rolled back many of Trump’s executive orders by noting that Trump did the same with Obama, only to see record-high illegal crossings spike to a million in 2019.

The Fox & Friends hosts seemed to want to score political points, but Johnson did not take the bait. He didn’t outright criticize the Biden administration’s handling of the border, but did allow that the messaging surrounding a closed border and deportations was lacking, particularly in sending a vital message to South and Central American countries that the border is closed.

Johnson also found common ground with Fox & Friends on the problems with much-derided sanctuary cities and explained how, under his watch, that was much less of a problem.

He mostly spoke about how the ebb and flow of the border crisis is symptomatic of a more significant problem that isn’t getting addressed. He didn’t say it this way, but it felt like his point was that the discussion was too focused on the symbolic bandage at the border instead of stopping the issue that was causing the bleeding.

Johnson was also very much in favor of the border bill that is held up in Congress because of Trump’s apparent unwillingness to give the Biden administration a political win in an election year.

Watch above via Fox News.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.