Guest Column: The making of Fake News

Eric West
St Johns, FL

Dear Historic City News editor:

I am writing because I feel your readers need to know the real story of what happened last night during the Fox News Channel Town Hall that aired from Ponte Vedra Beach.

You have heard President Trump talk about “Fake News” — well we witnessed fake news being made last night; and, quite frankly, the attempt to skew the conversation failed since the “plants” in the audience were mostly off the mark and incoherent in their points.

Last night, my wife Lisa and I were honored to be a part of a live studio audience for Fox News’ First 100 Days with host Martha MacCallum. For full disclosure, I was asked to participate ahead of time and agreed.

Although I knew I might get a chance to speak, I had no idea when or specifically what I would be commenting on. All I knew was that the show was on immigration, that’s it.

I knew most of the people in the room and when what I call “plants” showed up, we were all quite curious and as the show went on it became clear what was going on. For whatever reason, ratings I suppose, Martha had planted audience members and chose guests to skew the show and really tried to get a tear jerk reaction from people I guess to soften us up to the idea of amnesty and not building the wall. It was shameful.

I have a message for Martha, her producers, Fox News and the left here in the USA, the American people want to be safe, we want to protect American jobs, American lives and the American economy.

We want the wall built NOW, we want illegal immigration stopped, we want greater controls and a reduction in legal immigration and we do not want any more un-vetted refugees coming into our country and benefiting from our welfare system. We have 50 million people on food stamps, we have veterans living in the streets and unemployed and we have able bodied men and women who would like jobs and a shot at a better future. We do not need any more welfare recipients.

Martha’s show started out with an interview with Stephen Miller, senior Trump aide, in which she argued with him about the new Executive order on immigration. Why wouldn’t she be trumpeting the fact that the new order will secure our borders and keep the American people safe after un-elected judges have made us less safe by blocking the original executive order?

The American people overwhelmingly support closing our borders, controlling immigration and vetting refugees.

After that we were treated to a cavalcade of pro-immigration guests and “plants” in the audience placed there to skew the conversation. We the voters who were invited to participate thought we were there to share how we felt about immigration, real people, real voters with real thoughts on the subject only to be countered by “fake guests” making fake news.

Fake guest #1- Hatice Iaconangelo- She has been a vocal opponent of President Trump’s executive order on Immigration, has attended rallies to protest the Trump administration and was interviewed on Jan 30 by the Times Union and brought up the “Border wall reminds me of the Berlin wall” narrative. So, this woman was a known quantity who has an axe to grind with the Administration and represented a very small fraction of the voter base in St. Johns County FL. Her point about the wall made no sense and she used the opportunity to continue to paint President Trump in the light of a tyrant implying that his wall is the beginning of a communist takeover and oppression of the American people. She made no sense and did not represent the voters of the area. Well done Chairman Bill Korach who countered her and clarified that the Berlin wall was built to keep people in and hold them under communist rule and that our wall is to keep the American people safe. She wanted us to be compassionate urging us to open the doors to all refugees around the world. Sorry, we have our own issues and we cannot be responsible for the world’s refugees. She made a point that America is the “safest place in the world” yet seems to forget Orlando, San Bernardino, Fort Hood, Boston, St. Cloud, Columbus OH and others. The enemy is here and we do not need to bring any more problems to our shores.

Fake guest #2- Spanish television news anchor Maria Elvira Salazar- she came in with notes and a makeup person so we should have seen her comments coming but who knew she would start spewing about the problem being counties in Central America being the problem and driving illegals to our borders. She almost implied that Trump should invade Central America to fix their problems. If the people of Central America have issues with their governments, then their people should do something about it. We did that here in America in 1776. She is against sanctuary cities but is not in support of the wall. She wants us to use the money from the wall to support more refugees. We have veterans unemployed and living in the streets, we have 50 million people on food stamps and we have almost $20 TRILLION in debt, we don’t need and can’t afford any more refugees who largely, 91%, receive government welfare upon coming to our country. She was basically off point and again was there as a counter to the actual real citizens in the audience who support the President.

Fake guest #3- Pablo Manriquez, a fired broadcast media booker for the Democratic National Committee who, after a nine-month career at the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, now is Chief Operating Officer of “K Street Media, LLC”, a media consultant in Washington, DC, says he is “disgusted” with the Trump administration. He made a comment, not well received by the audience that enforcing our immigration laws would lead to illegals not reporting crimes in fear of being deported thus leading to more “battered women” (his example). This was a ridiculous point and again an attempt at tear jerking the viewers into thinking that enforcing our laws is inhumane.

The one big softball that Martha missed was when immigration attorney and amnesty supporter Francisco Hernandez said that if Trump says that Obama did not have the executive power to sign the DACA order, then how does Trump have the executive power to overturn it. Martha really missed this one. Former President Obama signed the executive order on DACA that made new law without Congress. That clearly is beyond the power of the Executive and created law which is not an enumerated power. President Trump’s executive order overturns this and returns us to enforcing the laws of our country. His order DOES NOT make new law. Hernandez should have been called on the carpet for this one and held accountable for his word games and his deception.

For the most part, the American people are okay with “legal” immigration. We are not okay with illegal immigration and all of the costs associated with it including forcing more Americans on to welfare because illegals took their jobs. We want the wall built, we want criminal illegals out of our country and we do not want to give ISIS a free trip to America to hurt the American people by bringing in un-vetted refugees. We need to have a pause to all immigration while we change the requirements of immigrants so we bring in people to help our country — instead of helping themselves by living on our welfare system.

If you disagree, look at the requirements for moving to Belize, Costa Rica and other countries. In many cases, you must have money in the bank, a job and a sponsor.

They don’t import welfare recipients, why should we?

Bottom line, we shouldn’t.