Fox’s Bret Baier Pushes Homeland Security Chief on Whether Trump’s Tariff Threat Worked on Mexico: ‘Is Any of This New?’
Fox News anchor Bret Baier pressed Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan over President Donald Trump‘s deal with Mexico to avoid threatened tariffs, asking him “Is any of this new?”
Shortly after Trump raged about a New York Times story that said Trump’s deal “consists largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take,” McAleenan appeared on Fox News Sunday to discuss the deal.
Baier started right in by asking McAleenan, following a report on the deal,”how much of this is new?”
“All of it is new,” McAleenan claimed. “I mean, we’ve heard commitments before from Mexico to do more on their southern border. The last time they deployed down there, it’s about 4 or 500 officers. This is a more than tenfold commitment to increase their security in Chiapas. That’s where people are entering from Guatemala in southern Mexico.”
According to the Times report, however, such an expansion was already “envisioned” by the deal that was struck in December.
“Your predecessor, Secretary Nielsen, testified that these things were happening, to the House Judiciary Committee, there were talks about moving national guard troop to the southern border with Guatemala, you are saying this is different than that?” Baier asked.
“It’s very different,” McAleenan said. “The president put a charge in this whole dialogue with Mexico with the tariff threat, brought them to the table, the foreign minister from Mexico arrived within hours. He arrived the next day with real proposals on the table.”
Baier then asked McAleenan about Trump’s tweets from Sunday morning.
“The president tweeted this morning that any stories that said that this was not new, as you’re saying, are false,” Baier said. “But he said there are some important things not mentioned and yesterday’s press release, one in particular.”
“Yeah, so the president tweeted out that this tariff has been suspended, that Secretary Mnuchin point it out that there’s a mechanism to make sure that they do what they promise to do, that there’s an actual result, that we see a vast reduction in those numbers,” McAleenan said. “And as the state department announced, there are going to be further actions, further dialogue with Mexico on immigration, and how to manage this asylum flow in the region, which is a small percentage of the total flow.”
The joint U.S.-Mexico statement on the deal mentions “further actions,” but does not say what those are, nor what specifically would trigger them.
Watch the clip above, via Fox.
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com
