MSNBC contributor blasts Trump administration for 'gaming' the system to 'look tough'
Reacting to a Guardian report that Donald Trump's administration is already inflating numbers to make the first three weeks more successful than they have been, journalist John Heilemann let out an expletive on MSNBC on Friday morning.
A "Morning Joe" co-host prompted the discussion by noting a report in the Guardian that stated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been tampering with time-stamps on press releases about immigrant roundups to create the impression they have been wildly successful in their mission.
As the Guardian reported, "That four-day operation in Colorado? It happened in November 2010. The 123 people targeted in New Orleans? That was February of last year. Wisconsin? September 2018. There are thousands of examples of this throughout all 50 states – Ice press releases that have reached the first page of Google search results, making it seem like enforcement actions just happened, when in actuality they occurred months or years ago."
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Given a chance to weigh in on the report, Heilemann stated, "In the period after the election I kept hearing from people who were misinformation and disinformation specialists who would say 'pay attention to what is going to happen here,' not trying to diminish the potential humanitarian harms that could happen in a big wave of deportation. But look out for the ways in which this administration will try to game social media and other media platforms to make it look like they are doing more than they are doing."
"They predicted this months ago and said, there's one problem is that they go too far," he elaborated. "Another problem is that they bulls--- the country about what they're actually doing and this is this is a first sign of it."
He added, "I wish I could say that it was my prediction, it was not, but some of these very smart misinformation people have predicted this and pointed at the fact it's another place in which Elon Musk and his influence over that platform can be complicit in messing with reality in a way that benefits Donald Trump politically, where he gets the win of 'Hey, it looks like we're being tough.'"
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