Five Quick Things: Abbott’s ‘Killer’ Rio Grande Barrier – The American Spectator

With the week we’re having in America, this could easily have been a 50 Quick Things instead of the regular-ole 5QT that it is.

And yes, I expect thanks from you for my brevity and restraint. A simple subscription to this fine publication will do nicely in that regard.

Anyway, let’s get this started so I can begin some Friday semi-loafing:

1. Who’s Really Guilty Down in Texas?

Something awful happened in the Rio Grande, just like something awful happens all the time there. Namely, people drowned as they tried to swim a river in order to break the law and invade what’s supposed to be the most powerful nation on earth (which in a sane world you’d think would be regarded as one of the most unwise moves anybody could make, but naturally…).

And it’s being blamed on Greg Abbott because of a barrier he put in the river:

Mexican authorities are trying to identify two bodies found in the Rio Grande, including one along the floating barrier that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had installed recently in the river, across from Eagle Pass, Texas.

Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department first reported that a body was found along the buoys between Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, Mexico, on Wednesday evening, and immediately connected it to the risks Mexico had warned of before the barrier was installed. Hours later it said another body had been found 3 miles (5 kilometers) upstream in an area where there are no buoys.

Both bodies were recovered by Mexican authorities, and the Coahuila state prosecutor’s office was working to identify them and determine the cause of death.

Mexico said the Texas Department of Public Safety had advised its consulate of the body along the floating barrier. Texas said it notified Mexico after receiving a report of a body upriver from the barrier Wednesday. It was unclear if that was the body that ultimately ended up lodged against the buoys.

“Preliminary information suggests this individual drowned upstream from the marine barrier and floated into the buoys,” said Steve McCraw, the DPS director. “There are personnel posted at the marine barrier at all times in case any migrants try to cross.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection was asked by an email and a phone call for comment on the situation, but had not responded.

Mexico and others have warned about the risks posed by the bright orange, wrecking ball-sized buoys put on the Rio Grande in an effort to make it more difficult for migrants to cross to the U.S. The Foreign Relations Department also contends the barrier violates treaties regarding the use of the river and Mexico’s sovereignty.

“We made clear our concern about the impact on migrants’ safety and human rights that these state policies would have,” the department said in its statement Wednesday night.

The level of cognitive dissonance here is bizarre, though perhaps it no longer amazes.

Consider:

• It’s illegal to swim that river for the purpose of immigration into the United States. There are rules for how to enter this country and swimming the Rio Grande is not permitted in those rules.
• The state of Texas bears the brunt of this massive wave of illegals. For example, the city of San Antonio has a population of some 1.8 million and now it has an additional estimated 400,000 people thanks to illegal immigration. This can’t be sustained. You’re seeing images of homeless camps on the streets of New York City because that place is overwhelmed with a tiny fraction of the wave of illegals.
• So Abbott installs a river barrier that, yes, does make it more dangerous to swim across the river. And why? Because he’d like to send a strong signal that swimming the Rio Grande shouldn’t be done.

Assuming that it was the river barrier that led to these two drownings — and there isn’t a whole lot of reason we should do that, but just for the sake of argument we will — is it Abbott’s responsibility that these people drowned?

Or is it the responsibility of the drowned?

You do not have the right to come to this country uninvited. When barriers are put up to keep you from coming here and you kill yourself attempting to cross those barriers, it is YOUR fault. Not the fault of the people putting up the barriers.

But the Mexican government, which is in league with the cartels who profit off this all-out invasion, wants to make Greg Abbott the bad guy here. And naturally, the Associated Press gleefully regurgitates their narratives.

Enemies. I don’t know about you, but all I see is enemies.

2. Tucker Carlson’s Other Major Scoop (And Screw You, Fox News)

You’ve probably seen the Tucker on Twitter (or is it Tucker on X now? That’s a title that isn’t going to work at all) interview of Devon Archer this week. That’s a must-watch even though Archer can’t uncover the entire picture of the Biden bribes. He can’t tell you that Joe and Hunter Biden were directly shaking down the people Archer was attempting to land as investors for his private equity fund, but he certainly can supply enough context as to make it very obvious what was happening.

But Carlson has something else to offer this week that is more important, even though it isn’t actually him doing the offering. From the National Pulse:

Former President Donald Trump has subpoenaed Fox News in an effort to attain an unaired interview with former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund. The interview was originally intended to air as part of then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s investigation into Jan 6 and the more than 40,000 hours of footage he was granted access to. The National Pulse yesterday released parts of the interview, with further clips due on Thursday afternoon.

One item of particular interest to Donald Trump’s legal team is comments that Sund may have made to Carlson regarding the presence of federal agents in the crowd on Jan 6. In an interview with English comedian Russell Brand, Carlson stated that Sund believed federal agents were among the crowds protesting the 2020 Presidential election result:

“I never thought there was a false flag or anything like that. I’m not a conspiracist by temperament… And then I interviewed the chief of the Capitol Police, Steven Sund – in an interview that was never aired on Fox by the way. I was fired before it could air… He was the chief of the Capitol Police on January 6 and he said ‘Oh yeah the crowd was filled with Federal agents.’ He would know of course because he was in charge of security at the site. So the more time that has passed, now it has been two-and-a-half years, it becomes really obvious that core claims they made about January 6 were lies.”

Carlson has said he’s going to re-interview Sund, so Fox News’ suppression of the former Capitol Police chief’s account of Jan. 6 won’t ultimately stand.

The quality of the leaked video isn’t terrific, but it’s good enough to understand what’s said:

Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund on Jan. 6 during an interview with Tucker Carlson that Fox News tried to HIDE: “Everything appears to be a cover up”@TheNatPulse

pic.twitter.com/qkWD09KhfO

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) August 3, 2023

Let’s just say that this doesn’t do the modern-day Inspector Javert, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, any favors in his attempts to imprison Donald Trump for, per this week’s sham indictment, attempting to raise questions about the 2020 election.

And if you’re still watching Fox News, why? They kept this information from you for months. Shouldn’t that be punished by the marketplace?

3. The Defamatory Tyranny of the Southern Poverty Law Center

At the Daily Signal, Tyler O’Neil is doing an amazing job of chronicling the inconvenience, if not damage, being inflicted on the conservative parents’ activist group Moms for Liberty by the leftist fraudsters of the Southern Poverty Law Center. That’s an organization that outlived whatever usefulness it might have had a couple of decades ago and is now nothing but a Democrat Party hack squad who specializes in smearing political opponents as racists and bigots and whatever else.

SPLC went after Moms for Liberty essentially because they oppose the twin cultural aggressions of transgenderism and critical race theory, and the implications of that are really something. You either stand by and let people who hate you turn your kid into an unhinged radical, or worse a delusional and emotionally confused basket case committed to a project with a 40 percent attempted suicide rate at its completion, or else you’re a hater. And if you join a group attempting to institutionalize your opposition to these things, that organization is then branded a “hate group” by the digital stormtroopers at the SPLC.

With the effect that Nextdoor banned a Moms for Liberty chapter in Tennessee, using the SPLC’s smears as a justification. And Eventbrite has pulled Moms for Liberty meetings from its offerings for the same…