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NEW DEBATE AS PRESIDENT OBAMA SCOLDS MEDIA FOR CAMPAIGN COVERAGE
Gina Loudon: Jobs and unemployment are the top three issues for Republicans and Democrats. Where are the tough questions for the Obama administration on all of this? This is this president who won't even come on your network and do an interview who's literally criticizing the media for handing this somehow to Trump. You look at Trump, my gosh, if the media digs any deeper on Trump they are going to dig up some dinosaur bones.
Juan Williams: Let's not forget, we have seen job growth over several years. We have 5 percent unemployment. We added jobs just this week. So when you talk about the economy, that's pretty good. When it comes to digging, I think a lot of the American media has done just what the president said in terms of go after the ratings. When Donald Trump was talking about the birther issue, I guess that's digging on Obama. Everybody played along and went right along with all that silliness, all the anti-immigrant stuff, all the anger about economic policy. Instead of saying we are trying to recover from a deep recession. That's what you see; I think republican niche media played right into Donald Trump’s hand.
Jonathan Hoenig: It is so offensive. Obama is always quick to lecture the media. I'm more sensitive to the business angle where he's quick to lecture business people how they should conduct their business, also everything from religion to the free press now. I do think Obama has in a sense paved the way for Trump. There are a lot of similarities. Obama's rub is that he's always been lawless. When you think about it, Trump talks about tariffs, his love for eminent domain and government healthcare, there's not a lot of difference between the two.
Rebecca Berg: There's no playbook how to cover Donald Trump and that presents a challenge to the media, how much airtime do you give him versus other candidates? How do you cover someone who has no political history whatsoever except for comments he has made? In terms of votes, in terms of elections, there’s nothing there. It's a challenge for the media.
PRESIDENT OBAMA URGES AMERICANS TO ACCEPT SYRIAN REFUGEES
Gina Loudon: This is common sense. If you have a pipe burst in your house and the pipe is flooding, the first thing you do is turn off the water. At some point you have to realize we have been under such massive terror threat, we remain under massive terror threat that our economy is tanking due to the burden of people we can't afford. President Obama is absolutely wrong. There is nothing wrong with compassion but nothing says that those people have to be brought here for us to be compassionate. We can help them where they are and in other places.
Rebecca Berg: Certainly because of the attack and climate of terror and political implications of that,
people feel fear about this. Obviously we've seen that play out on the campaign trail with the presidential race. The fact of the matter is, we have been as a country, accepting people from these regions for many years without incident. Refugees from Iraq and Iran, from Syria over many years and hundreds of them.
Juan Williams: Gina, I want you to know the stock market is doing great. America's economy is not tanking. When you say things like that, I think it feeds into anxiety and fear much as this conversation about Syrian immigrants. All of a sudden, every immigrant is a demon terrorist.
Jonathan Hoenig: I've always been for open immigration but for nonthreatening, self-sustaining immigrants, like a lot of those from Mexico were a great boom to our economy specifically. What is being talked about here isn’t immigration it is importation. It is not America's job to feed the sick or help those who ruined it around the world. If individuals want to take refugees in, that's perfectly
Appropriate.
STUDENTS WANT QUESTION ABOUT CRIMINAL HISTORY BANNED FROM COLLEGE APPLICATIONS
Rebecca Berg: It should definitely be a decision for the university to make but I understand the argument that these students are making. College is such an important stepping stone towards success for any person’s life. To preclude someone from applying to a university or maybe scare them away from applying to a university because of some minor offense as a juvenile, I can certainly see why these students are concerned by that.
Juan Williams: It is hard to get in to college in America. There is competition and you want to know the background of people. It could be a Horatio Alger story where the kid had a criminal background, the school sees promise, talent and they put him in school.
Jonathan Hoenig: There are already 17 states nationwide that prohibit employers from asking about criminal histories and I think schools are pretty much the same thing. Call me crazy but I cannot think of a more important question than, have you ever been in jail? The Irony is that these activists protesting against asking people about a criminal history by breaking the law themselves and trespassing.
Gina Loudon: The funny irony here is students want to be paid for things they haven’t done but they don’t want to pay for what they have done. How about we match them up with the Emory students from last week, that were in pain because someone wrote ‘Trump 2016’ in chalk on the sidewalks. Let the criminals go ahead and check the box come to college anyways, maybe they can teach them a thing or two.
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