MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt suggested that Fox News’ Sean Hannity influenced President Donald Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency, during a Thursday appearance on “Meet the Press.”
Trump announced earlier in the day that he plans to sign a bipartisan congressional bill that provides limited border wall funding, while also declaring a national emergency at the southern border.
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“I think that the bipartisan coalition that you’re going to have here is going to be strong enough that there is not going to be a lot of concern. We know that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is planning to vote against this. I think that echoes what you saw,” Hunt began.
“There was a split in the 2020 Democrats in the Senate on how they voted on this. You saw, you know, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker voting against it,” she continued. “So they can say, you know, I didn’t vote for a dime for President Trump’s wall. Now you saw Amy Klobuchar, and somewhat oddly, I have to figure out exactly what was going on here, Bernie Sanders as well.”
“That’s her announcement speech, it would have been weird if she didn’t,” Todd followed up. (RELATED: Immigration Hawks Sound Alarm On Congressional Border Wall Deal)
Hunt responded:
I think you will see something similar in the House. Now the one thing that I wonder, this president is very mercurial, as we know, this commitment to signing the bill seems ironclad. But frankly, the criticism that’s coming out from Republicans, I mean just as we’ve been standing here and talking, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who was in the leadership in the House until very recently, she’s saying the same thing as Nancy Pelosi. What would President Bernie Sanders or President Elizabeth Warren do with this power? We cannot possibly give it up.
She continued, “Marco Rubio has said something similar as well, so clearly the president got this idea from Sean Hannity and others like him who were saying, ‘Okay fine, you have to swallow this, Democrats have you in a bind, but you have to declare this emergency.’ I think this problem will fester here for the president.”
Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency is not surprising. In a speech he gave announcing the re-opening of the U.S. government in late January, he said he would go down this route if Congress could not come up with a deal within a three-week period, which would have expired Friday.
