WATCH: Stephen Miller Destroys Fake News Narrative Over National Emergency Declaration
Tom Pappert
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Stephen Miller, Senior Policy Advisor to President Donald J. Trump, obliterated the fake news narrative surrounding the national emergency at the United States’ southern border in a contentious interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace.
After President Trump declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border to bypass a politicized Congress and protect the United States, Miller appeared on Chris Wallace’s Fox News Sunday to answer questions about the declaration. Wallace quickly became hostile in the interview, questioning Miller repeatedly as to whether or not he considered the declaration to be a violation of the U.S. Constitution, and interrupting Miller’s attempts to answer the question.
Miller explained that the president’s power to declare a national emergency stems from a statute passed by Congress many years ago, telling Wallace “If you don’t like the statute, or if members of Congress don’t like the statute, then they should have changed it a long time ago,” while being interrupted by the Fox News host.
Chris asks Stephen Miller is the President's order violates the U.S. Constitution #FNS pic.twitter.com/b4kYtTAiDI
— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) February 17, 2019
“The premise of your question is also false, because Congress has appropriated money for construction of border barriers consistently,” said Miller.
Wallace pointed out that previous border barriers have not been funded through national emergency declarations, and again asked whether this made the action illegal.
“[Congress] passed a law specifically saying the president could have this authority, it’s in the plain statute,” said Miller, “That’s a decision that Congress made, and if people don’t like that they can address it.”
“We’ve declared national emergencies to promote democracy in Belarus, to promote democracy in Zimbabwe,” Miller explained, “This would not be even an issue if the president was invoking that statute to support some foreign adventure overseas.”
Miller then lambasted previous presidents’ use of national emergencies to invade countries while bypassing Congress.
“You and I both know that presidents for years have engaged in one military venture after another, not to mention the fact that we do operations to destroy drug fields in foreign lands, in Afghanistan or in Colombia, and we can’t even deal with the criminal cartels operating on our border.”
While being interrupted by Wallace, Miller added, “These organizations are destabilizing the Western hemisphere.”
“This is a fundamental foreign policy issue,” he concluded.
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