Why the media keeps getting Trump and his supporters wrong

Eileen J. O'Connor:
In the September 2016 issue of the Atlantic, Salena Zito diagnosed the chasm between opinions about then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. She wrote that “the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.” That continues to be the case in 2019.

Mexico paying for the border wall is a prime example. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other detractors speak as though President Trump had said Mexico was going to write us a check. He didn’t.

It reminds me of journalists’ and Democrats’ frustration when President Ronald Reagan responded to, “What is your strategy for the Cold War?,” with, “We win, they lose.”

Some have speculated that the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement would change the balance of payments enough in favor of the U.S. to cover the cost of the wall. That’s possible.

As I’ve noted in other writings, including a lengthy and detailed article in InFOCUS and a shorter article last month in this publication, permitting and requiring the Internal Revenue Service to determine eligibility for certain refundable credits susceptible to fraud would more than pay for several walls along the southern border.

The improper payments the IRS makes in just one year under just two of those programs would pay for enough manpower, physical and virtual barriers to secure the southern border. In 2017 alone, the IRS made nearly $25 billion improper payments of refundable earned income tax credits and refundable additional child tax credits.

Reducing remittances from the United States to Mexico is another way Mexico might “pay for the wall.” Remittances are amounts migrants working in one country send to their home country.
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The media gets confused about Trump's rhetoric because it can't seem to separate the noise from the substance.  His supporters can and that is one of the main reasons why all the tendentious fact checking in the world will not move them to support Democrat policies that hurt them and the economy.

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