Ann Coulter told Breitbart News on that President Donald Trump should deliver an Oval Office address to highlight the importance of building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — including broader threats to Americans’ well-being via the status quo of both legal and illegal immigration — in the midst of congressional budgetary negotiations and a partial government shutdown. She offered her remarks on Thursday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.
“I’ve been saying this to the president since soon after the election: He ought to have an Oval Office address, serious and calm,” Coulter said.
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“When he wants to be presidential, he can be presidential,” she continued. “He should sit in the Oval Office, be presidential, be serious, and say, ‘Look, a lot of wild things are said during a campaign. They’ve been said by me, by my opponents, but illegal immigration is a serious issue and it’s hurting the least among us.’ And he should sit in the Oval office and play the clips of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi promoting this. He could give a devastating address [and] put the Democrats so much on the defensive. … This could be a huge political win and save his presidency if he makes this a major public issue. The Democrats cannot win if people are allowed to talk about immigration. That’s why the plan was always been: Don’t let people talk about it and don’t let people think about it.”
Mansour recalled, “Every president in the past has used the bully pulpit that they have. Barack Obama, when he wanted to get Obamacare passed, called a joint session of Congress to address them on the issue, prime time live. When Ronald Reagan wanted to get his tax cuts passed, he had an Oval Office address. It was one of his best. He encouraged Americans to call and wire Congress with telegrams, and it was effective. Tip O’Neill famously said, ‘We’ve got a telegraph blizzard hitting us on Capitol Hill,’ because Ronald Reagan was telling Americans to contact their representatives to vote for his tax bill. I don’t understand why Trump doesn’t use an Oval Office address.”
Coulter concurred, “Your Reagan example is so great because as high as taxes were until Reagan came along — and they’ve never gone back to that level again — it hit mostly high earners. [Immigration] is an issue that, I mean, every family that has been touched by the heroin epidemic will be on his side. There are a lot of families — the crime issue has always been very good for Republicans — people always underestimate why the crime issue is so important. Just take the case of Kate Steinle. Okay, that’s one dead American, but think of all her family members, all of her friends, all of her classmates, college friends, the neighbors, people in her home town; a crime like that, it goes out in waves, and so many people end up being horribly affected by it. Immigration is so much bigger than Reagan’s tax issue.”
Coulter added, “First rule of warfare is you pick the battlefield. As long as he picks immigration, he will win. [Democrats can’t help themselves. They will say things that will enrage the average American.”
Coulter concluded, “An Oval Office address would should him as the president. I just think there’s something very powerful about that, and to get away from them trying to demean the important issues that Trump raised during the campaign; very important, somber, and serious issues. We’re a compassionate people, but right now our people need their own help. I just think he can address that single issue in a very good way. … An Oval Office address would be somber and serious and it would take away the carnival atmosphere around a lot of his appearances, and it would be focused on this one issue, which is such a winning issue for him. The immigration issue is the Democrats’ kryptonite, and Trump has it but he won’t use it.”
Mansour said, “I nominate Ann Coulter to write the Oval Office address. That should be one of your columns.”
“I would stop doing everything else and sit down and write it for him if he would deliver it,” replied Coulter.
Reiterating a point in her latest column, Coulter emphasized the importance of Trump’s promise of a border wall versus the vague “border security” promises offered by other politicians on both sides of the aisle.
“‘Border security’ is just a b.s. phrase that means they’re not going to do anything,” said Coulter. “We know that, and that’s why the guy who talked about Mexican rapists and building a wall and repealing the executive order on anchor babies got more votes than any Republican in the history of presidential primaries.”
Coulter said, “All [Democrats] want is to get Trump; lure him into it, say, ‘You’ll be a statesman. You have to compromise. What’s this obsession with the wall? It’s your wall and your shutdown.’ Their endgame is make him break his promise on the wall and they will instantly start calling him a liar.”
Coulter stated, “That hour-and-a-half press conference he held, 98 percent of it was about Syria, ISIS, Mattis, McChrystal, Romney. … Even the reporters who must know immigration isn’t a good issue for the Democrats, even they got bored with this endless exegesis on the Middle East. Would you get back to Make America Great Again? Talk about that. You win when you talk about immigration, Mr. Trump.”
Coulter added, “At that last Oval Office meeting it was comical the way Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer kept saying to Trump, as they’re discussing the wall and whether they’re going to fund the wall, ‘We should really have this conversation behind closed doors. We should really talk about this privately. I don’t think we should do this in public.’ A child would know, hey, this must be bad for them to discuss in front of the American people. I’m going to insist that every discussion about the wall and the shutdown be in public. Why shouldn’t it be? Trump is the most transparent president we’ve ever had. There’s no point to White House memoirs. We know every pleasing impulse he has because he tweets it out. Why did he allow them to have a behind-closed-doors meeting on immigration? The more public the debate is, the easier it is to win, because the people are on his side; even the Democrat people. Absolutely the African-American and the Hispanic people — the left behind, the working class — they’re the ones who are hurt the most. Have this debate in public. It will kill the Democrats, and he will win.”
Reflecting on her latest column, Coulter described the provision of medical care to migrants held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as pull factor for foreigners seeking entry to America.
“The only person in the administration who agrees with Trump on any of these MAGA issues — particularly immigration — is Stephen Miller,” said Coulter. “There was Bannon, but what really set me off was the head of Customs and Border Patrol announcing on ABC’s This Week this Sunday, ‘Don’t worry, we’re sending doctors to the border. They will be treating every child under 17 who’s brought to the border. If there are any problems, we’ll get them their medical treatment.’ Oh, for Pete’s sake! We’re going to have every parent with a sickly child in Latin America. I mean, I feel for the parents. I would, too. Hey, I can get an American doctor. I can get First World medical care and guess what? I don’t have to pay. Talk about creating a magnet for a rush to the border. … Any doctor being sent to the border is by definition being taken away fr an American who needs medical care.”
“[A border wall] is an irreducible requirement,” declared Coulter. “It is the minimum irreducible requirement of what we are asking for. Yes, we want a wall. We also want E-Verify. We also want an end to this scam of illegals running across the border when they’re nine months pregnant, dropping a baby, and calling that baby an American. No Congress ever passed that law. No Supreme Court has ever announced that that is the law. It’s insane. … Why hasn’t Trump signed that executive order [to end birthright citizenship], yet? We heard about it during the campaign when he was trying to gin up votes for the midterms.Is it that hard to sign the executive order? The wall is the minimum requirement of what Trump promised and why he won.”
Mansour asked, “How can [Donald Trump] get the money? What are we going to do right now to get this funding for the wall? What would you tell the president?”
“I would talk about nothing but immigration, the wall, the families being killed by drunk driving illegals, that lovely policeman up in California who was killed by the illegal,” said Coulter. “I would talk about all of the opioid deaths, the heroin being brought in by drug cartels just waltzing back and forth across the border. The more he talks about this; that’s how he won more votes than any other Republican in presidential primary history. That’s how he won the election. That’s how he wins everything.”
Pollak invited Coulter’s comment on last week’s killing of a California police officer, allegedly by an illegal alien.
“The other conspirators who aided and abetted the illegal alien staying here so he could kill a cop in California were, of course, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, the mayor of Oakland,” stated Coulter. “We have a long list of aiding and abetting the illegal alien cop killer. That ought to be Donald Trump’s Kate Steinle.”
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