Today the editors of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal slammed GOP frontrunner Donald Trump for his opposition to the publication’s long-standing support for open border trade and immigration policies.
The Wall Street Journal, like Murdoch, is decidedly open borders. In 1984, the WSJ editorial board wrote, “If Washington still wants to ‘do something’ about immigration, we propose a five-word constitutional amendment: There shall be open borders.”
Breitbart News has previously exposed how Murdoch is the co-chair of what is arguably one of the most powerful open borders immigration lobbying firms in the country, the Partnership For A New American Economy. Similarly, Murdoch has joined executives at Goldmann Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup in urging Congress to fast-track President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which Marco Rubio described as the “second pillar” of a President Rubio’s three-pillared foreign policy platform.
“Republicans should look closely before they leap,” the Journal warns voters. The Journal points specifically to Mr. Trump’s recent hiring of Stephen Miller, the brain trust of populist thought leader Sen. Jeff Sessions.
The editors write, “A bad sign is that Mr. Trump has hired as his campaign policy adviser Stephen Miller, who worked for Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), the most antitrade, anti-immigration Senator.”
When we honored Sen. Jeff Sessions with the first Phyllis Schlafly Award for Service to America at our President’s Council, we were honoring his staff, especially Stephen Miller. Stephen has been an invaluable resource for the fight to protect American jobs and to stop the immigration abuses. He is bright, quick on his feet, and he transforms complex issues into understandable forms.Eagle Forum has asked every concerned citizen to read Sen. Session’s immigration document – it is an invaluable tool for the fight – and Stephen had a large hand in that document.
The editorial board’s opposition to the hire seems at odds with the views of other conservative and establishment media thinkers alike. Washington Free Beacon editor Matthew Continetti described Miller as, “one of the most skilled comms [communications] guys on Hill,” a sentiment retweeted by former George W. Bush speechwriter, David Frum. Similarly, Daily Beast columnist Stuart Stevens– hardly a Trump supporter– said that Trump’s hire of “very smart Stephen Miller” struck him as the “first indicator [Trump] might be giving POTUS race respect it demands.”
This is not the first time the Journal has taken aim at Sessions’ support for immigration moderation and his opposition to trade surrender, a position now championed by Trump. In the past, the board has devoted entire editorials to attacking Sessions’ pro-American worker platform. The Daily Caller has described the editorial board’s prior attacks as a “sloppy shot.” In fact, in their strained effort to smear the Senator’s position, the WSJ editors allegedly made up an entire quote that was not actually attributable to the Senator.
More than 9 in 10 Republican voters oppose the immigration policies ushered by Murdoch, Rubio, and The Wall Street Journal. Additionally, only 11 percent of GOP voters think so-called “free trade” deals will improve wages. By a nearly five-to-one margin, Republican voters believe these trade deals championed by Rubio, Murdoch, and the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal will reduce wages rather than raise them. It is perhaps, in part, for this reason that Jeff Sessions ran unopposed in both his last primary and the general election.
The WSJ editors suggest that they would much prefer Trump work with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell than Jeff Sessions. The editors write that if Trump were to “work closely with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell,” he could perhaps “craft a reform agenda to revive the economy à la Reagan. His tax reform outline is close enough to sensible that Mr. Ryan could knock it into shape. He would not want to be a ‘loser’ office,” the editors explain.
Sessions, unlike many Washington politicians, has proven that he is not afraid to strike back at the publication favored by many in the Republican Party’s donor-class. In a letter to the editors last year, Sessions wrote: “America is a country, not a spreadsheet. A country puts the needs of its own citizens first.”
Interestingly, in not one of the Republican debates thus far has Marco Rubio been asked about his longstanding support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has been endorsed by Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul behind Fox and the Wall Street Journal.
When asked why he thought this to be the case, Sessions said, “I think their owners, their corporate gurus that dominate the network and stations, are internationalists. They’re globalists and they’ve bought into this. They just have.”