Maddow, Psaki Mock Voters’ Immigration Concerns

Zach Kessel writes for National Review Online about two left-of-center media commentators’ attitudes about American voters.

MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Jen Psaki mocked voter concerns about illegal immigration during the network’s coverage of the Super Tuesday primaries, expressing their disbelief that the issue could be so salient in this year’s elections.

MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Jen Psaki mocked voter concerns about illegal immigration during the network’s coverage of the Super Tuesday primaries, expressing their disbelief that the issue could be so salient in this year’s elections.

The issue of immigration has — for the first time since 2019 — become the most important problem voters say the United States faces, according to a Gallup poll released in late February. Twenty-eight percent of respondents cited immigration as the country’s biggest challenge, while the government came in second place at 20 percent and the economy come in third at 12 percent. Immigration is the only issue on which respondents to the Gallup poll had moved over preceding month; in January, only 20 percent of Americans surveyed said it is the most pressing problem with which the U.S. contends.

Fifty-five percent of respondents — an all-time high — believe immigration to be a critical threat to American interests, representing an 8-point increase from 2023. Ninety percent of Republicans and 54 percent of independents agreed with the sentiment, while only 29 percent of Democrats said the same. Thirty-one percent of those surveyed characterized immigration as a serious problem that does not reach the level of a critical threat, and just 14 percent said the issue was neither dire nor important.

While Psaki mocked Americans’ concerns over immigration during her MSNBC coverage of Tuesday night’s contests, she has previously taken a different position. As President Joe Biden’s first White House press secretary, she often assured journalists at her press conferences and the American people at large that the president took illegal immigration seriously.