 Wednesday, it's 11 o'clock. It's March the 24th, 2021. It's time for only one thing, and that's what now America? I'm Tim Appichelle, your host. Welcome. And today's title is Migration Headaches for President Biden. I'd like to introduce my guests. Good morning, everyone. With us today is Jay Fidel, Winston Welch, Stephanie Dalton, and Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Aloha kakakyaka. Yes, yes, thank you. We're in Hawaii, remember? Today, I'm not sure where I'm at, but I appreciate you reminding me. Thank you, Stephanie. Well, you know, it doesn't take much to bring back the old days of the Trump administration when we had caravans of immigrants rushing the border and trying to take over America. And, you know, Donald Trump playing that up as best as he possibly could to scare the hearts and minds of American voters. But we do have an issue at the border, and it seems to be growing. We have over 14,000 unaccompanied minors currently in not in detention, but they're being in detention, basically. And they've come here to the United States by themselves, which is a risky thing to do. Jay, what do you believe is the cause all of a sudden of this rush or influx of unaccompanied minors to America? Two thoughts on that. One is that Joe Biden is a nice guy, and he's talking about trying to, you know, make immigration better. And he's actually taking steps within his ability to issue executive orders for that purpose. And I think that filters down south, and people think, well, maybe the United States is kinder and gentler than it was under Trump, so they head north. That's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is that the conditions that drove them north in the first place never ended. Their desire to come to the United States never ended. And it's a survival thing to keep on doing it. But I think, you know, the one thing I wanna mention within the allotted time I have is that what strikes me is that we are in a political civil war. The Republicans and Trump weaponized immigration. They weaponized the shlugging a wall. They put, you know, kids in cages. They took Perconian steps, really mean, nasty steps. They made the immigration service meaner and far meaner than it needed to be, and used it as a political tool. Now, when Biden has, as is hands full, was pretty much the same phenomenon. The Republicans are criticizing him. You know, he's been in office, what, how long? It is, you know, two months. He's been in office only two months and whatever processes are in play are, you know, are the extension of what Trump created and allowed and fomented in his time in office. And now the Republicans are out there blaming Biden for everything. This is part of the political war. And the larger picture is they wanna make them look bad. They wanna make them look bad because 2022 is only a couple of years away. And they wanna have them for lunch on that election, doing everything they can possibly do. This one is easy. They have no interest in passing an immigration reform bill. He wants to do that. You know they're gonna do everything possible to stop it and then make them look bad on that and every other initiative he submits to Congress. Okay. Well, two points I wanna bring into your attention. And one is, you know, there were some severe hurricanes back in November, 2020, Hurricane Eta and Lata. And they, those hurricanes back to back devastated Honduras and a lot of Central American countries. And I don't think those countries have actually recovered. And so not only were a lot displaced and lost their homes and their crops, but it devastated the entire area. So that could be part of the reason, but I wanted to ask you with whether or not you thought the executive order of the dreamer, allowing dreamers to stay in the country, prompted parents to basically say to their children, go get into the country any way you can because President Biden has signed this executive order about letting children stay in the country. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I think that did have a big play to it. So I agree. Hey, Winston, playing to Jay's point that the Republicans want to use this as a wedge issue because if you remember in 2016, it was this very issue that got Donald Trump basically elected was, you know, we had porous borders and the Obama administration was allowing rampant immigration to go unchecked, which wasn't true by the way, but he was used as a wedge issue. And it seems to me that this will play very well in the 2022 election. And why is that? Well, we have so many people at the border right now that the word has gone out that the Biden administration has let adults go because we have so many people in detention that they have let adults go without any check-in requirements, without any phone numbers or instructions on how to report to courts when their time comes due. I don't know to what extent that has happened, but that seems to be playing right into the GOP hand to say to all Americans, both Democrat and Republicans, see the Biden administration is like the Obama administration. We're gonna have unchecked immigration and it's going to destroy the complex in nature of this country. Your thoughts on the GOP and their ability to use this as a wedge issue? I'll no doubt will be used as a wedge issue, but you know, you basically, if I were living in Honduras or Guatemala and I had a 16 year old kid and I knew what his prospects were gonna be, I would say, you know what son, here's some money, go north, find a coyote and get him across the border right now. We've got a new administration. I mean, I would do it. It's a survival issue. Like Jay said, your chances of either being murdered or in gang warfare or just a life of terrible poverty. And what we really need to do is like so many issues, go back to the root cause of this. And we need to, as a great nation, we need to look at our, in our own hemisphere, our own backyard and say, what can we do to help these countries that are so close to America raise? They don't wanna come to America. I mean, it may be the promised land at some level, but they wanna stay home with their friends and families and neighbors. What can we do to strengthen their societies? What sort of Marshall plan can we do for Central America so that they don't have this? What sort of help can we give with policing and with social services and healthcare and I don't wanna say nation building, but nation supporting so that we don't have that. I mean, that's the real issue because people don't wanna lead their country by and large. But when they're forced to, they're forced to. And now that this, these awful, awful, unhuman, inhumane policies that were enforced over the last four years are gone, I can see the appeal. So, you know, also other things about like having to wait in Mexico for permission, you know, this is gonna require to sustain concentrated focused effort with the leaders of these nations and to provide leadership where it doesn't exist. We have that, Joe Biden is going calmly and quietly about this, there seem to be building a lot more places to receive these kids, but ideally, you shouldn't have to send your kid to America at 16 to escape a life and to get to a life just to have a life. But that's the reality that we have. You know, Winston, this morning news was that he put Kamala in charge of immigration. Who means he really cares about it? He knows he has a political problem about it and he wants to do something. But let me take a moment to agree totally with your point about we have an obligation, a blessed oblige obligation to help the country south of us. And during the Trump administration, we didn't do anything to help them. Well, in earlier administrations, we might have done a little, but the bottom line is the US for its own security should be helping South America, Latin America every day. Didn't we already decide this one with the Monroe doctrine saying this is our sphere of influence? Well, if it's our sphere of influence, then let's step up. And that was what, 1814 or something like that? Yes, yeah, right. So, but ideally just like with Europe, you want a free, prosperous, democratic, rich, wealthy Europe, just like you, that's what we did with Europe so that it didn't fall into whatever, fascism or communism. We need the same thing for Latin America. We've just let this languish in our backyards for decades. And it's not who we, we can do better than that. And if we raise their standard of living where they're at and help them do that. I mean, the Marshall plan was not a huge, massive expenditure in the scheme of things, but it was able to get Europe on the right track. And I think we need to focus on the problem rather than the brew problems rather than of course the immediate problem. You can't do that without Congress. You cannot do any of this without Congress. Every issue is politically locked up. Yeah, every issue, Jay. Public transigence. We're not going to get anywhere in anything. Agreed, Jay. Every issue is tied up. And again, it's all about the filibuster. So that's a separate topic. And it's one which could take up three shows on whether or not that filibuster goes away or not or how it's amended or how it's shaped differently. So, all right, thank you, both of you. Cynthia, at this point, how has the Biden administration addressed this crisis at the border? And has the GOP already been able to get a toehold into this issue so they can use it against them? Has he responded fast enough? Is it effective enough? It certainly doesn't happen when reports go out that they're letting undocumented people that have floated into the country just go and let them go. That doesn't help. That doesn't help. It helps the GOP in their argument and their claims, but it certainly doesn't help the Democrats. So your opinion about how the Biden has responded thus far? Well, I don't believe much of anything that the GOP wants to say these days. They have lied so repeatedly over and over and over that I don't believe anything. So if this bit of news about these people being led into the country came from them, I would disagree. No, this is normal news reporting that this actually did occur. So it occurred, I don't know to what degree. I don't think it was massive amounts of undocumented individuals that were let free and without any expectation of reporting back, without any paperwork, without any phone number contact information, but it is what something has happened. And I think the GOP will run with it. Yeah, I still don't know if I believe it completely because the official thing that the Biden administration has put out and it was in response to a recent interview by Republican Tennessee Senator Blackburn where she was on Fox saying that it's all Biden's fault that we have this surge of children. In reality, right after that on CNN when they were talking about this, the Biden administration put out a response saying that the border is not open. She kept claiming that Biden said the border is open. So they put out an official statement saying the border is not open. And they're doing as much as they can to make sure that people don't just come in like that released that way I wonder about the suspicious between what Biden is saying in official responses and measures and then what this is. So they all fit together and for me anyway, they don't. Well, I think that's a great point and I think this is a perfect time for the Biden administration to dispel many of the myths that the GOP went points on. Thank you, that's where I was going. That is my biggest thing right now. Why isn't the Biden administration, I mean, coming down hard on all these lies and all these misinformation things. It's like they're ignoring it, hoping it will go away. And that's right with this situation. Well, I think the number one thing that the GOP scores on, based on a broken myth that's been dispelled decades ago but they still went points is the fact that anyone who's undocumented is fully going to regain the benefits of the federal government. And what does this say? They can come in here and they can get their benefits of such as welfare and SNAP programs and all of those benefits that anyone who has a green card is eligible for but they've used that so well in the past to say see, you're a taxpayer and now you have to fund all these undocumented workers or not workers but undocumented individuals for all these federal benefits. And simply it's not true. No one gets these benefits unless they have a green card or I think if they're legally being in an asylum classification, they may be eligible for some of those benefits. Right, but so the GOP keeps saying that one thing I wanted before I get too far away from it, before we all get too far away from it. We're talking about how we need to help the other countries so that they don't need to come here, right? Well, I'm not totally sure and I don't remember all the details of it but didn't Trump stop one of those programs for that so that we were helping those countries and he rolled back all of the aid that we were giving them? Yes he did, good point. So yeah, I think it's totally true that we do need to fund these places so that they don't need to come here. I think another point is that the number of personnel hired to patrol the border went up in every administration and even the Obama administration went from like 18,000 to 21,000 and then under Trump it actually went from 21,000 down to 19,000 employees. So it's odd that this was his soapbox which gained him I think part of the election in 2016 yet other than building a few miles of a wall he really did everything he could not to stem the flow. And did you see there was a question? I think it's worth asking one of these guys. Stephanie, to you. The question is VP Kamala Harris recently has been tasked with dealing with the border crisis. What do you think she can bring to the table that the normal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of State can not bring to the table? What special talents will she make a difference? Well, I think there's just been so many insightful and creative comments, really problem-solving advances here expressed on the show so far and I don't need to enumerate all of those. We can go back and look at it again. But I think that just as with getting Trump off the presidential stoop stand will elevate the interaction and the conversation nationally and internationally. Some especially at the level of fifth grade playground bully stuff. The same thing needs to happen with regard to these issues that we just keep slamming and slamming on and that's immigration. So if Kamala can bring this kind of insightful, creative, divergent thinking to addressing the crisis and the issues and identifying the problems and doing some analysis to come up with ways that need to be tried that haven't already just been hammered to death. And I think- I think Stephanie, she can also identify the lies that Cynthia was talking about. She can separate the wheat from the chaff. And she's got the power. This is the thing about the power. So because putting a high level official on this gives it airtime, okay? So she can get on and upgrade the time covered in the national news. But if it's the same old happening, these problems, same stuff, what's the use of it? We've all heard it. So the American people are concerned about the money that's being spent on this or concerned about our international image or concerned about the blasting up of our values and the care of children has been the latest one. So we need to raise the level of the discourse to much more insightful, creative and constructive, coherent problem solving. We have the capacity to do this. This is why we were great. So I call on her to use the power to get the attention and to get the commission, the committee, whatever, together to let's do some work here. Yeah. Stephanie, last question on this topic for you. Does this sudden rush to the US border? I know immigration is part of the Biden agenda. I'm not sure what priority that was placed. I think the election reform, voting reform was certainly high on the list. Also, infrastructure is high on the list. Does this particular issue derail the synergy, the energy of the Biden administration to get things knocked out in Congress? Well, I think it's a big message that the international community, our fellow border people and South of us, they know our value system better than we do. They're coming here for the things that we've forgotten about and the Congress has forgotten about. They're here for that. And even though you're risking coming across that border, because you could easily get shot in the head, as all of us can, going to cut and pick and fresh foods or wherever. So I think they're all operating at this level that they envision is the United States and the United States of America needs to work real hard on getting back up there and get in line with them. So yeah, it's there and it's a reminder and it's a challenge. Alrighty, well, hey, thank you, Stephanie. Hey, switching gears, Jay, to you. I think it was Nancy Meyer from The New Yorker, wrote an article recently about what Cyrus Vance could do to bring down Donald Trump now that he's out of the office as President of the United States. A fascinating article because it goes into depth about who Cyrus Vance is, what his reluctancy has been in the past for prosecution, but also how earnest he is in pursuing some of these charges. What are those charges? We're looking at undervaluation of assets and that pertains to bank fraud. We're looking at fraud issues with insurance companies. We're looking at, excuse me, I said undervaluating assets. I meant overvaluating assets for banks, yet undervaluating assets for the IRS in which he pays taxes. We're looking at the Stormy Daniel payments. We're looking at the Carol Madugo payments. We're looking at his involvement with Deutsche Bank. There's a whole laundry list of things that Cyrus Vance could possibly look into. Your thoughts about this article and what chances will they be successful in any kind of prosecution of Donald Trump or an indictment pending? Well, I was encouraging to read the article. It was in the New Yorker last edition and it was quite, it was really a masterful piece of work. Examining what the charges were, who Cyrus Vance is, or what could, what should happen with respect to all of these, you know, misdeeds of his, many of which are in fact criminal. I think I was left with, you know, one thing that I think has to be mentioned is that Cyrus Vance is leaving his office. He's retiring at the end of the year. This only came out within the last few weeks, as I understand it. And he's probably leaving it to this guy, Pomerance. Pomerance was hired as an expert in organized crime cases. And he's a real sophisticated, hard-nosed litigator because he's been on both sides of the issue and especially a prosecutor. So in a way, Pomerance is going to be better than Cyrus Vance. The article showed you Cyrus Vance's political backgrounds, his connection with the elite, elite political operatives in New York. It did not mention, however, the abacus federal savings and loan case. I don't know if you guys ever knew about that. This happened five or six years ago and Cyrus, it was a fallout from the 2008 economic crisis. And he only went after one company. And it was a federal savings and bank called Abacus Savings and Bank Federal Savings in Chinatown, New York. That was a small family operation. Everybody in the bank was a member of one Chinese family in Chinatown. And when he went after them with tongues, hammer and tongues, then they resisted and they fought back. And they were, it was David and Goliaths kind of saying, and they beat him. And the big question at the end of the days, two questions, is why did he go after only one defendant? And it was, by the way, it was an unrelated issue. It was one of the employees of the bank misrepresented something and it was small potatoes. It was really small potatoes. It had nothing to do with the crisis of 2008. And there was Cyrus spending the taxpayers money, chasing this Asian family around for years, and he beat them. So Cyrus is not perfect, okay? He's not perfect for the case and he's not perfect for leaving at a time when he could stay. He's popular. Everybody is rooting for him and he's leaving. Is he going to get Allen Weisselberg to flip over on Donald Trump? Donald Trump's confident for 30, 40 years, is he gonna get that close relationship to testify against Donald Trump? Well, I don't think we're gonna see much from actually from Cyrus Spanish in the next, what, nine months. Cause at the end of the year, he's gone and it's gonna be Pomerance instead. But yes, Weisselberg is sitting pretty for a flip. Why? Because he's got no protection from Trump. Trump cannot help him. Trump can't pardon him. It's a state crime, not a federal crime. It's a perfect opportunity for a good prosecutor to flip Weisselberg. And if he does, I mean, the consensus among prosecutors is that is the end of Trump. Trump will be found guilty not only on the things we know, but on so many things included in the documents from what is it, Mizzards and Deutsche Bank and various other things that have not come public yet that are as bad or worse. Weisselberg can tell us all. And that if he flips, it will be the end of Trump. If he doesn't flip, he's gonna go to jail. Yeah, let me go to Winston to follow up on that point. If, excuse me, the New York Southern District of Manhattan is successful of bringing an indictment against Donald Trump, Winston, what will that do to this country? What will that do with the 74 million voters that voted for Donald Trump and how will it impact the 22 election and furthering the divide between Americans? Is it gonna be the witch hunt that Donald Trump says it will be? Will that further bring us down and put us into a state where nothing's getting done? Just to, it's a great article in the New Yorker which came out 22nd of March. Just to quote from it, it says, Vance's office could well be the only operable break on Trump's remarkable record of impunity. He has survived two impeachments, the investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller, half a dozen bankruptcies, 26 accusations of sexual misconduct and an estimated 4,000 lawsuits. And as successor, President Joe Biden so far seems to prefer that the Department of Justice simply turn the page. As a result, the contest between Vance and Trump is much more about, much more than about a financial investigation. It's a stress test of the American justice system. Trump as a man who's gotten away with everything in his life. He's in front of the rule of law to all law abiding citizens is the quote from George Conway, Kellyanne's husband. So he says, in office, Trump often treated laws with political weapon using the Justice Department as a tool for treating enemies. Now he's pitted against a VA who regards the laws as the politically blind foundation of democracy. As Conway put it for Trump, the law is a cudgel for Vance. It's what holds us together as a civilization. And so he says, and that's why people who thumb their noses at it have to be prosecuted. And if they aren't, you're taking a big step towards a world where that's acceptable. And I think that's what we've dealt with the last four years. So 4,000 lawsuits, two impeachments, special investigation, Donald Trump will come out of it unscathed, unfortunately at the end of the day, his base of whatever's left will hem and ha and say it's so terrible and blah, blah, but at the end of the day, he's not gonna be imprisoned. He may be found guilty, but it'll probably be like the article suggests something more like verse Gologna where he had to do community service, which whatever that was, and then he got realized. On the invest along the highway. Okay, thank you, Winston. Hey, Cynthia, what do you think's gonna happen? You think Donald Trump is gonna be indicted? And if so, what would happen if he went to jail? Other countries, France and Winston just referred to Italy, they've thrown their former prime ministers and especially in France, I mean, they've been convicted. Sarkozy's been convicted. Jacques Chirac was convicted. And the bottom line is, what if Donald Trump is convicted? We can only hope and pray, right, that he will be because like Winston read from this article, if we let him off the hook, not only will we might be stuck with him again, but we'll be stuck with somebody that's just like him and possibly smarter, which would be even more dangerous. And he might be, and we always talk about Trump being so dumb and he may be dumb about some things, but he's incredibly crafty and smart in those ways. I mean, he's a gifted con man, his whole life, that's what he's done. So hopefully he will, I'm glad that they've changed. The critics assert that Vance, he was, let's see, I'm gonna read it from the article so I don't get it wrong. We're running out of time, but go ahead. He has frequently retreated when faced with rich and powerful criminal targets. Notably in 2012, he dropped a case involving two of Trump's children. So I'm glad Vance is leaving. At first I thought, oh, we don't really need to be changing in the middle of all this. And then I read this article. And then- Mark Palmer is a pit bull, certainly much more of a pit bull than Cyrus Vance. So I would agree with that statement. Glad, and I have more hope now that after reading this article, I really read everyone because so long, but I really stress that you guys- Well, it's a great article and I'm glad that it was brought to our attention. Okay, hey, we've run out of time, but Stephanie, it's been a tumultuous week so far. Your thoughts about this week and where we move from here? Well, I certainly hope, as I tried to interrupt and ask Jay earlier, sorry about that, but I was so motivated because does Weisselberg have protection? Because already Biden has admitted that this guy can kill. I mean, this is a Putin-esque person we have. Good point. And so is Weisselberg, do we know anything or maybe they're not talking? You assume that all the FBI or whoever is doing their duty, but are they? This man needs protection. In fact, they just thought of taking him away somewhere. I think your point's right on because it's like the untouchables. Elliot Ness got a hold of the accountant against Capone and they had to lock him away so he wouldn't be bumped off. It's a done deal if he has one centimeter of option. And Trump does. So he knows to push it to the limits. He knows when to fold them and he knows when to hold them in our system which is so admired because it is so fair and it is the rule of law. He gives every kind of opportunity for defense and he takes that ball and runs with it in a way to make it advantageous for the drop dead guilty. So he knows how to do all that. He's been doing it since he was a kid and there's still the issue of the older brother that hasn't been resolved. Nobody seems to be too interested in that but I don't put anything past him and I hope that Eiselberg is in good shape in this. Well, we've run way over time but I can't let the show end without getting into your last words. Very briefly, JTU, last words? Yeah, this is a stress test just as Winston has read from the article of the American justice system. And as Cynthia has imparted, you know there's a fair chance that and for that matter Stephanie there's a fair chance that Trump will use all the tools in his kit bag including really some nefarious things as he has in the past and somehow escape. And this will be a failure of the stress test. We have to watch this very carefully because it's not just what happens to Trump. It's how the country and as Stephanie says it's how the world thinks of us. This is the asset desk coming up now. It may seem like a bunch of financial issues but it's boring, boring but it's much, much more than that. Also I wanna tell you that tomorrow on America Finding Its Way we're gonna talk about the second amendment among other things. I'm gonna talk about all the things that flow out of that. So they're stopped by at 11 o'clock tomorrow. Okay, thank you, Jay. Winston, your last words? I hope we cover Ruth Marcus' column that just talked about the filibuster and getting rid of it or not getting rid of it as well. What publication? It came out in Star Advertiser but she's from the Washington Post. I think she had some pretty salient points that sort of summarized everything. And are we facing a stress test? Yes, let's let the process unfold. They have these hard drives and Deutsche Banks and all the files, millions of pages in double lockdown gold foil protected rooms. So let's find out what happens. Vault, not room, vault. Vault, and let's see what happens. And as information percolates out, maybe people can decide, okay, I'm gonna choose another team. Okay, thank you, Winston. Hey, Cynthia, your last brief words? I feel that it is important. There was an NBC News special that came out with Julia Ainsley, Jacob Soberoff and Laura Strickler. And these three people have been involved in dealing with the border crisis since it first started during the Trump administration. And they had put out an article saying that the Biden administration officials say that Trump officials delayed action on child migrant surge. In early December, the Biden transition team and career government officials started sounding the alarm on the need to increase shelter space because they knew they were coming. So... Okay, well, it didn't catch the news, you know, the media. It was focused on other issues, obviously, because we didn't catch a lot of that. Now it seems like it suddenly happened and it looks like it's Biden's responsibility. Like, what day Biden and his administration, the delegation is inside those facilities in the CBP one, because, you know, half of the kids are in a DHS run one and a facility. And then the other kids are in a CBP facility. So everybody into DHS, no more private facilities. That's the most important part is that there's no more private run facilities. Good point, all right. Wow, we've covered a lot in a short time. So that's our show for this week. I need to say thank you. Wait, wait, Tim, wait, wait, wait. Yes. I gotta correct one thing that's really important. Go ahead. No doctrine. 1823. That's right. He knew. I meant to say something. Google it, folks. Educate yourself. I'm glad we're all about making sure our facts are correct. We're live fact checking right here on Think Tech. And speaking of facts, ladies and gentlemen, we're out of time. That's a fact. So I wanna say thanks you for Jay Fidel, Winston Welch, Cynthia Leeson-Claire, and Stephanie Dalton. Thank you one and all for attending What Now America? Join us next week, Wednesday, 11 o'clock. I'm Tim Apachele, your host, and we'll see you then. Aloha.