CNN’s Jim Acosta: White House sending ‘a dog whistle’ on immigration

CNN senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta on Wednesday accused the Trump administration of advocating an immigration policy that thinly veils their intent to restrict immigrants coming to the United States based on race and ethnicity.

Acosta pointed to comments from White House aide Stephen Miller during an appearance on CNN shortly after a contentious exchange with the aide during Wednesday’s press briefing, in which Miller made the case for a “merit-based” immigration system.

“When you hear the president make some of the comments that he makes about immigrants during the course of the campaign … and when you see Stephen Miller, a policy adviser to the president, talking about an English-language preference for people coming into this country, it is a wink, it is a dog whistle to certain parts of this country that they’re going to be looking at the racial and ethnic flow of immigrants coming into this country,” Acosta said on CNN’s “Newsroom.”

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“I just think that’s undeniable.”

Moments earlier, during a fiery back-and-forth, Miller went after the CNN reporter during the briefing for asking if the Trump administration planned to only allow foreign visitors from Great Britain and Australia into the U.S., because they are predominantly English-speaking countries.

“Jim, I am shocked at your statement that you think that only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English. It reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree,” Miller said, calling it one of “the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish things” he had ever said.

“It just sounds like you’re trying to engineer the racial and ethnic flow of people into this country,” Acosta shot back, adding “of course” English speakers come from other places around the world.

Acosta said on CNN that Miller’s public attack doesn’t help the White House as it attempts to make the case for GOP legislation that aims to scale back legal immigration to the U.S.

“I think when the White House has to resort to insulting reporters in that fashion, and we’ve seen this time and again throughout this administration, they are just really not advancing a terribly powerful argument,” he said.