Donald Trump Blasted As ‘Transparently Racist’ After He Repeats ‘Fox And Friends’ Line On Immigrant Invasion

Donald Trump was blasted on Sunday after he took to Twitter to repeat an argument used just hours before on Fox and Friends, about an alleged invasion of immigrants from Latin America.

Trump made the tweet as part of his continued pressure for funding to build a border wall. The president has blasted what he referred to as open borders, an idea falsely attributed to Democrats and repeated across a number of right-wing media outlets. That line was the focus of a segment of Fox and Friends on Sunday morning that the president apparently took a liking to, as he went on Twitter within hours to repeat the message.

“Gallup Poll: ‘Open Borders will potentially attract 42 million Latin Americans.’ This would be a disaster for the U.S. We need the Wall now!” Trump tweeted.

As many pointed out, the Gallup poll asked a hypothetical question of Latin American residents, asking if they would like to immigrate, and if so, where they would be headed. A total of 27 percent said that they would move if they could, and of that group, 35 percent said they would move to the United States.

The poll noted that the numbers brought some bigger questions about how America might plan for immigration, and what message it would send to potential immigrants.

“Most U.S. citizens like me just want to know the plan,” the report noted. “What is the 10-year plan? How many, exactly whom and what skills will they bring? What do we want? Answer these questions, and the current discussion can be resolved.”

This is transparently racist. What are we doing here? https://t.co/nN042L3eTI

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 10, 2019

With Donald Trump boiling the poll down to a simple message about building a wall to keep out all immigrants, many people took to Twitter to push back. Vox journalist Aaron Rupar said that Trump’s tweet was “transparently racist” and noted how the president echoed the exact argument from Fox and Friends nearly verbatim.

Donald Trump has frequently been accused of using his favorite Fox News shows for policy ideas, with the morning show Fox and Friends being one of his favorites. Trump frequently tweets about segments he had just seen on the show, even going against his own administration’s policies at the network’s lead. Last year, Trump repeated a Fox News segment blasting plans to renew the FISA Act, which was officially supported by his administration. White House officials scrambled to release a statement to worried Republicans saying that they were actually still in support of the surveillance act’s renewal.