by JULIA HAHN6 Feb 2016Washington D.C.4444
On today’s program of Breitbart News Daily, Donald Trump’s Senior Policy Adviser, Stephen Miller, shared his never-before publicly discussed insights intoSen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)’s duplicitous conduct during his push to get the Gang of Eight bill through the Senate.
At that time, Miller served as the communications director for the man who organized opposition to the bill, SenatorSen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). Miller recalled how throughout the Gang of Eight push, Sen. Rubio “directly deceived” immigration law enforcement and the American people.
Miller recounted one story in particular about Rubio’s treatment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) union president Chris Crane, who represents thousands of ICE officers. At the time, Crane slammed Rubio for having “directly misled law enforcement.” In his Congressional testimony, Crane said, “Never before have I seen such contempt for law enforcement officers as what I’ve seen from the Gang of Eight.”
For the first time ever, Stephen Miller explained exactly what Rubio did to Chris Crane and how he had deceived the nation’s ICE officers.
During the Gang of Eight press conference to introduce the bill, Crane had attempted to ask a question. Miller explains that Rubio watched as Chuck Schumer repeatedly refused to allow Crane to ask his question, and Rubio eventually oversaw Crane being removed from the press conference by Capitol Hill security. Miller said that Rubio:
… refused to meet with ICE officers throughout the process [of crafting the bill], even as he was meeting with open border special interests. At the very end, he [Rubio] had an optics-only meeting with [Chris Crane] the representative for ICE officers, in which he made a series of promises, every single one of which he broke and violated directly … When that same ICE officer and Marine went to a press conference to ask a question, Rubio — through his silence — was complicit in Schumer blocking [Crane] from asking a question and allowing him to suffer the indignity of being forced out of a press conference room — a man who had served his country in uniform, as a U.S. Marine — all to spare Rubio from the discomfort of being publicly questioned about why he had broken his promises.
Rubio saw them [Capitol Hill security] take Chris Crane and remove him from the room and said nothing. When he [Rubio] had a chance to show an iota of independence, one scrap of independence from Chuck Schumer, and side with an American Marine and ICE officer — Rubio chose to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm with Chuck Schumer, as an American Marine was forced to suffer the indignity of being removed from Marco Rubio’s Gang of Eight press conference. That’s the story I want to tell today.
Miller’s retelling of the event is as follows:
I would love to tell a story for the first time to your incredible listening audience that I think gives some important insight into Mr. Rubio that I’ve never had a chance to tell before…
I want everyone to step into a time machine and go back to 2013 and remember what it was like. Remember the 24/7 media frenzy. Remember the promises: enforcement first, no welfare, no food stamps, we’re going to have the strongest, toughest border security ever, and, of course, no amnesty– all of these claims, by the way, which are still on Mr. Rubio’s website…
And of course all of those claims were bogus: it gave welfare, it gave food stamps, there was no border security, there was no ‘border security first’… But one of the things that we noticed early on in the process was that Mr. Rubio’s Gang of Eight was meeting with all of the open borders special interests in America: whether it be the Chamber of Commerce, whether it be certain tech corporations, whether it be anti-enforcement groups like La Raza, etc. etc. or the White House, which had an office in the Senate to help push through the Gang of Eight bill, a fact that Mr. Rubio never mentions in his many interviews on Fox and elsewhere promoting the bill. So we said, ‘Let’s get in touch with immigration law enforcement and see if maybe Mr. Rubio would be willing to meet with them.’
So we got in touch with one of the most incredible men that deals with immigration… his name is Chris Crane.
Miller explained that when Crane was finally able to secure a meeting with Mr. Rubio, “Crane had wanted to bring along [a staffer from Sen. Sessions office] who could provide some additional legislative support in the meeting… [however] Rubio’s office, of course, vetoed that completely… The meeting, as Chris Crane described it to me, was fairly horrifying.”
Crane said that he said to Rubio, ‘Well, you know, under your bill criminal aliens get legalized.’
And Rubio would say [in response], ‘Oh no, no, no, that’s the not the case at all.’
And then [Crane] said, ‘Well, under your bill, there isn’t any resources or support for ICE.’
[To which] Rubio said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, we’ll put that in there. We’ll give you, ICE, whatever you need. You’ll get it, you’ll get it, you’ll get it.’
And so Crane said that he obtained a commitment from Rubio to put stuff in the bill that Crane felt that ICE officers needed.
And instead what happened was– only a period of hours later– instead of doing anything that he had promised Chris Crane– a marine, ICE officer– that he would do. In the dead of night, Rubio and the Gang of Eight introduced a bill delivering everything they wanted for the special interests. Now a short time after that Marco Rubio, Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Gang of Eight held a press conference. I decided to go and Chris Crane decided to go to watch the press conference and see what was happening. And so they did this magisterial roll out. All of the supporters of the Gang of Eight bill were up there and the Senators were up there and everyone was slapping each other on the back, and it was ‘Morning in America’ is here again.
Chris Crane, who had just been deceived directly by Mr. Rubio, decided that he wanted to ask a question at the press conference. As a citizen, as a marine, as an ICE officer, as a representative of 7,000 other ICE officers, agents and frontline personnel, he said, ‘I’d like to ask a question at the press conference.’ And I was standing next to him at the time. I believe Chuck Schumer was the one who was at the podium taking questions and Rubio was right next to him.
You know how it is at these scrums, someone shouts their question out, and then someone calls [on them]. And so Chris Crane tried and tried and tried, and everybody could hear him asking: ‘Will you take a question from law enforcement? Will you take a question from law enforcement?’
And Mr. Schumer was up there and Mr. Rubio was up there and they wouldn’t take the question. And everyone in the room… was aware that Chris Crane was trying to ask a question and Schumer wouldn’t call on him….
And I was looking at Mr. Rubio and he looked right at Chris Crane. He saw him there. He had just met with him a few days before, and he saw Schumer refusing to take his question. And instead of stepping up and saying, ‘Of course, we will take a question from a marine, from an ICE officer, and I will happily answer it’– Rubio stood there stone-faced and silent as Schumer refused, refused, refused to take Chris Crane’s question. And then Capitol Hill security came to remove Chris Crane from the venue for having the temerity to ask a question…
Rubio had the chance to step in and say, ‘You don’t need to remove an ICE officer, and marine, from our press conference. Of course, we’ll take his question.’
No, Rubio saw them take Chris Crane and remove him from the room and said nothing. Then later on when he was asked about it in subsequent media interviews he said, ‘Oh that’s unfortunate, they shouldn’t have done it.’ But when he had a chance to show an iota of independence– one scrap of independence from Chuck Schumer and side with an American marine and ICE officer– Rubio chose to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm with Chuck Schumer as an American marine was forced to suffer the indignity of being removed from Marco Rubio’s Gang of Eight press conference. That’s the story I want to tell today…”
Miller concluded:
You have to ask yourself when you’re thinking about who you choose as a Commander-in-chief, how you’d feel about somebody who’s willing to give the Chamber of Commerce everything they want, and willing to give La Raza everything they want … someone who’s willing to give Larry Ellison everything he wants, someone who’s willing to give Microsoft everything they want, and Mark Zuckerberg everything [he wants], but someone who is not even willing to have an honest meeting with ICE officers? You have to ask yourself what game was he playing? What was the goal? What could compel somebody to do that?
Because remember, he had all the leverage. He could have said to Chuck Schumer anytime he wanted to, ‘Mr. Schumer, unless Chris Crane gets what he wants, I’m walking away.’
Remember what Rubio always says when he’s asked about his involvement in the Gang of Eight. He says, ‘Well, I just wanted to get the best bill I could get out of the Senate.’ […] But as this story proves, that statement is materially false because at any point if he had said to Schumer, ‘I’m walking away… unless you give ICE what they want…’ If he had done that, Schumer would have had no choice, but to make those changes. So the fact that he didn’t do that is proof that every time Rubio says, ‘I tried to get the best bill out of the Senate,’ the unfinished part of that sentence is: ‘I tried to get donors and open borders interest groups the best bill for them that I could get out of the Senate.’ And Chris Crane would have been an impediment to delivering for these donors and interest groups.’
Read More Stories About:
Big Government, 2016 Presidential Race,Immigration, Jeff Sessions, Mark Zuckerberg, Chuck Schumer, gang of eight,La Raza, Larry Ellison, Stephen Miller, Chris Crane
