The GOP-fueled hysteria over the Central American migrant caravan traveling north through Mexico is nothing more than midterm election hyperbole, Fox News host Shep Smith insisted Monday.
“There is no invasion. No one’s coming to get you. There’s nothing at all to worry about,” he said calmly on “Shepard Smith Reporting” on Monday.
“But tomorrow is one week before the midterm election — which is what all of this is about,” he added.
Smith tried to calm the public about the caravan shortly after President Donald Trump again referred to it as an “invasion” and U.S. officials announced that an additional 5,200 American troops will be deployed to the border by week’s end, The Washington Post reported.
“This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!” Trump tweeted earlier in the day.
The migrants are “more than two months away — if any of them actually come here,” Smith noted.
“When they did this to us, got us all riled up in April — remember? — the result was 14 arrests. We’re America. We can handle it,” he said.
Smith last week accused Trump of fearmongering to win votes. The migrants are not “coming to get anyone,” Smith also said then. “They’re seeking relief from their hell at home. And that’s the truth.”
Robert Bowers, who is suspected of killing 11 people in an anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday, echoed Trump’s terminology on social media, branding the immigrants as “invaders” and blaming Jews for bankrolling the operation. A right-wing conspiracy theory blames progressive Jewish philanthropist George Soros for funding the caravan, which is not true.
Soros, a frequent target of Trump’s, was sent a pipe bomb in the mail last week, allegedly sent by Florida resident and Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc, who is suspected of mailing similar devices to others vilified by the president, according to law enforcement authorities.
The U.S. troop deployments, in an operation called Faithful Patriot, will first focus on the border with Mexico in Texas, then in Arizona and California, according to Air Force Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, the chief of U.S. Northern Command.
