Hi R,
Tis difficult to discern what will happen based upon what a politician says he'll do.
I'm just speculating about what is most likely, ie, the "wall" is beefed up security which is effectively a wall.
Regarding the problems he'd be addressing.....
Agents detail 'daily' border fence battle, seek post-Obama 'restart'
Again, we don't have any real reason to believe he actually understands the real problems with our southern border. He clearly fails to understand the basics of the real problems facing this country more broadly, in fact. He instead perpetually Tweets and vents about imagined problems on a daily basis, making blatant threats to imagined national enemies like the press.
Getting back to the border though, ports of entry along the border wall do need more staff and equipment at present. This is NOT due to increased illegal immigration; it's declined over the past decade, in fact. Rather, this is due to new measures set into place which require border staff to abide by more stringent anti-corruption procedures that tie them down. Extending the wall itself will be a waste of billions in taxpayer money, however, so making any reference to building or extending a wall in the context of actual research is nonsensical. Trump's complaints about "all" migrants, documented or otherwise, being "criminals" or "the worst" are entirely unfounded as well, with the low crime rates in port cities like El Paso providing evidence to this fact (Source:
BorderFactCheck &
WOLA's Oct 2016 Report).
Concerning the Fox article, it is simply factually untrue in a number of ways. For starters, it begins with an anecdote that's extrapolated to imply a rising tide of illegal migrants. This is in fact untrue. Illegal entries do continue to be an issue, but research from the
Pew Research Center clearly demonstrates a
decline over the past decade of illegal migrants: from a 12.8 million peak in 2007 to a steady decline in 2014 down to 11.7 million. Fox's accusations in your linked article that "agents in Border Patrol say they are still grappling with fallout from the Obama years" are therefore unfounded. Furthermore, Fox's emphasis on anecdotes to the degree of showing video of a few illegal immigrants blowtorching a hole into the fence is clearly, in light of the facts based on research, and coupled by Fox's history of cherry-picking facts and warping stories to favor Republicans and demonize Democrats is clearly intended NOT to report on the truth, but to rile up and anger conservatives into agreeing with Trump's false assertions and unfounded policies.
You're making the false false equivalency, since I'm not claiming that any sources are equally biased.
One could even make the case that overall bias is even worse in the left direction, when including
the more mainstream media, eg, CBS, NBC, ABC.
But I'm not addressing magnitude to that level of precision.
To claim he's more dictatorial would require some real policy or legislative examples.
Well for starters, he's now stepped up his unfounded verbal and Twitter assaults on mainstream journalism's integrity by hypocritically calling them "fake news" sources, to now physically barring journalists from the NY Times, BBC, and several other media organizations that have been the most critical of him and his policies (
Independent). Meanwhile, he's invited a few right-wing "media" organizations (with far lower readership but very favorable treatment of him), including Breitbart News... the group whom his Chief Strategist Steve Bannon served as Editor-In-Chief of until fairly recently.
History shows us that when authoritarian leaders successfully rise to power, among the first things they do is demonize their critics in the press. Which Trump has been doing. They furthermore set about to spread propaganda which paints themselves and their policies as "the greatest," as Trump has been doing.
At this point in time, he's begun to take action against, and not just verbally assault, the press. And with Trump's and Bannon's voracious and persistent threats to step up their assaults upon the press, our First Amendment liberties to a free press is now actually under assault. I expect a barring of media critics and invitations to media sycophants to not only recur going forward, but to worsen. Trump detests any and all criticism, and he'll trample our constitutional rights to silence the opposition... as he's already begun to try.
Getting back to history, once the critics have been silenced and the propaganda machine is running, the rest of our liberties are no longer protected.
We can only hope he's impeached before it gets much worse.
My only radio source is NPR, & BBC via NPR.
I don't do TV news, other than an occasional survey of Fox, OAN, & MSNBC to compare coverage.
Most of my news is the electronic version of print media via Drudge (which spans a wide political spectrum), eg, NYT, Huff Po, Wa Po, Fox, local papers, local TV stations. I skip the worthless ones, eg, Breitbart, Infowars, Alternet. As for periodicals....Smithsonian, Pop Sci, Nat Geographic.
What do you rely upon?
Similar, actually. I use a wide variety of media sources too, but tend to go more with the NY Times most often. I sometimes check the Huffington Post and Washington Post, I do listen to NPR in the car, and I'll often check with Fox News as well for their take on things. I also read the Smithsonian and National Geographic. I'm also a member of the American Historical Association and read their newsletter and peer-reviewed articles on historical events. Ultimately, I review media articles for an overview and will not make conclusions until I've actually investigated situations with the experts: research institutes that actually study the issues. For instance, I read up on WOLA's reports to better acquaint myself with the real and fake issues of the southern border. I've also actually visited and spent time at Breitbart's site reading through several (hideously abhorrent) articles to investigate the allegations that Steve Bannon and his staff there are what the left portrays him as (spoiler: he most definitely is that bad), and I've listened to Pence speak for himself in recent interviews with conservative media to get a handle on his views and intended policies. I've formally studied history in college, so I understand how to vet primary and secondary sources of information, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to take biases, omissions, lies, and other potential and actual falsehoods into account. In fact, I'm planning to start blogging, and intend to write about how to vet sources of information for quality.
In hindsight, sorry if that last post came across a bit wordy and strong. I recall now that your real issue with Clinton was her war record and not the other issues I went into. This latest escalation of assault by Trump on the press and thereby our constitutional liberties really has had me on edge the past couple of days. :/ It's absolutely intolerable and unacceptable, and should be thus for all Americans who claim they love freedom and liberty, frankly.
