President Donald Trump claimed credit for the idea of sending immigration agents into airports to take over security duties, but he seems to have been inspired by a segment on Fox News.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrived Monday at some airports around the U.S. to assist Transportation Security Administration officials during a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. Trump quickly credited himself for devising the plan, but talk radio host Clay Travis said the idea originated with one of his viewers.
"On Friday, a caller named Linda proposed a brilliant idea," the host posted on X. "Friday night, Clay talked about it on Fox. [Saturday], President Trump took the advice! Way to go, Linda."
CNN's Brian Stetler dug into the issue and found the same evidence.
“'Linda from Arizona,' a caller on a conservative talk radio show, might deserve the credit or blame for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deploying to airports across the United States today," Stetler reported. "The caller said on 'The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show,' 'I think I have a solution to the TSA problem.' She said, 'We need to bring in ICE agents.'"
Travis called her idea "brilliant" and then shared it Friday evening on Charlie Hurt's Fox News program, which Trump watches regularly, and he posted the following day that he intended to send ICE agents to handle airport security.
"Prominent pro-Trump social media accounts amplified the segment and cheered the idea of deploying ICE on Saturday morning," Stetler reported. "When Trump posted about the deployment idea on Saturday afternoon, a fan wrote to Travis, 'I first heard the idea from a caller on ur show. Brilliant.' Travis replied, 'Me too!'"
"CNN searched TV transcript databases and found no other mentions of the idea on major networks until Travis brought it up," he added.