Doing Your Own Research

By Ed Hoffman

If you watch the weekend news coverage of the election – specifically, the Sunday politics shows – then you already know that the front-running Republican candidates are being accused of “bending the truth” to fit their narratives. It would be great if Republican voters like me didn’t have to spend all our time defending our party’s candidates, but since the media wants to analyze their every cough and sneeze, I guess that’s our job now. So here goes.

Of course, Donald Trump is being accused of dishonesty – first, over his claim that Obama wants the U.S. to take in 200,000 Syrian refugees, when the White House has said its goal is to take in “only” 10,000 – and second, over saying that the refugees we take in “could be ISIS.” It’s true, Trump has repeated this four times since September without citing any credible source (he usually says “they’re telling me it’ll be 200,000,” or “I hear he wants 200,000”…not the best way to make such a significant claim).

Because of things like this, I’m not exactly a Trump supporter; however, let’s look at his intentions (after all, don’t Democrats love to give people credit for their intentions?). When Trump says, “They could be ISIS,” clearly that means what we all suspected immediately after the Paris attacks: That ISIS infiltrators could sneak in with Syrian refugees. Do any of us really think Trump is saying every last Syrian refugee is with ISIS? Come on now.

Next, as Trump said Sunday during one of his many TV appearances: Whether the number of refugees we take in is 10,000 or 200,000, the odds of ISIS operatives penetrating those groups are still pretty high. All it takes is one, right? And it doesn’t even have to be a Syrian national. Like some of the Paris attackers, he can be a radicalized European using a fake Syrian passport to get into the United States as a refugee. So let’s take a step back and give Donald Trump a break; it’s easy to accuse him of “instilling fear” in people, but why shouldn’t we be afraid in these times? It’s better than being naïve.

Next, they’re still attacking Dr. Ben Carson for his “rabid dog” analogy a few weeks ago. But after Carson’s trip to Jordan over the weekend, he stands by those comments – because the Syrian refugees there agree with him. “The Syrians and the people here completely understood what I was saying,” Carson said on “Meet the Press.” “It’s only the news media in our country that thinks (I’m) calling Syrians dogs. They understand here that we’re talking about the jihadists, the Islamic terrorists.” Carson said the reception he got from refugees was “quite warm” in Jordan – a far cry from what our left-leaning media would like you to believe about him. Furthermore, he said, the Syrian refugees he met don’t want to come to the United States; they want to go home.

“I was a little bit surprised with the answer, because it wasn’t what we’re hearing a lot,” Carson said on ABC’s “This Week.” “We’re hearing that they all want to come here to the United States. And that’s not what they want. They want to go back home.” Carson and Trump actually agree, as do several of the Republican candidates, that creating “safe zones” in Syria is something the U.S. can help with, in addition to giving humanitarian support to Syrians who inhabit those zones. You won’t hear that on the snarky liberal blogs calling Trump and Carson “xenophobic,” and you won’t hear it from your low-information voter friends – so, I encourage you to do your own research. Let’s listen to what actually comes out of the candidates’ mouths, rather than the words the media is saying for them.

Ed Hoffman is host of The Main Event on AM590, which airs Saturday 9:30 AM- 10:30 AM and Sunday 4:00 PM- 5:00 PM. Follow him on Twitter @EdHoffman, and like him on Facebook by searching The Main Event 590.