Fox host asks if Trump was “playing the poker game” with threat to deport 800,000 DACA recipients

Ainsley Earhardt: It’s possible Trump “just said I'm going to send the Dreamers back home or back to their parents' original countries ... just to alert the Democrats”

From the September 8 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

Video file

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Last week you sat on the couch, and you said you feared -- and I'll just paraphrase -- you fear that all the mean things that people had said about the president were true if he told these DACA kids to leave. He said he gave them -- gave Congress a 6-month window to come up with a deal for the 800,000 that were brought here by their parents at a very young age. And the president took it a step farther yesterday, tweeting this out, “For all those DACA kids that are concerned about your status during the 6-month period, you have nothing to worry about.” What's your reaction? 

GERALDO RIVERA: My reaction is that I like to think in my own mind, in my own heart, that my dear old friend, the 45th president of the United States was watching Fox & Friends that morning, heard my heartfelt plea and knew that if people like me who are rooting for him 100 percent tell him that this is a very bad thing to do and that I have to rethink my relationship if he went down that road to be heartless and cruel, as some of his critics were suggesting, that I couldn't be friends with him anymore. Whatever it was, I don't know if I had a scintilla of influence, but I am delighted that the president of the United States has done the right thing for these 800,000 absolutely, comprehensively vetted young people, all of whom have jobs, or are in the military, or in college. I think that he did a wonderful, wonderful thing. He is right. Congress has to pass a law. Congress legislates, not the presidency, but he had enough pragmatic idealism, is what I call it. He had enough compassion but also the good sense of a businessman to say, listen, you kids, you haven't done anything wrong. Your parents dragged you hear when you were babies, or, you know the average age 6 years old, and I'm not going to punish you for the deeds of your parents or the deeds of the former president of the United States who went, arguably, beyond his constitutional authority to pass this executive order.

AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): You think he was just bluffing though? You think he was just playing the poker game, and that was the card? He just said I'm going to send the Dreamers back home or back to their parents' original countries just to get the Democrats -- just to alert the Democrats? Then he has the meeting with [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi [(D-CA)] and [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer [(D-NY)], and he said, you know what, I'll keep the Dreamers here if you give me the wall. 

Previously:

Fox anchor: “One could very easily argue ... that this was President Trump protecting the Dreamers”

Fox's Kilmeade: Trump “didn't kill” DACA

Fox anchor: Is there “honestly ... anybody on Capitol Hill who thinks that” the 800,000 DACA recipients “are going to be, somehow, sent back?”