Normally a sitting president wants the widest possible audience for any televised speech he makes. But not Barack Obama when it comes to immigration and his version of amnesty. According to the Washington Post, Obama did not make the customary request for broadcast time for his speech tonight from the major networks. So ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox won’t be airing it.
But Obama has timed his address to come at the start of the second hour of the Latin Grammys, an immensely popular award show on Univision, which was watched by 10 million people last year. Univision, whose Spanish-language programmers have long been friendly collaborators with the White House on its propaganda efforts, will delay the second half of the awards show so it can air Obama’s 15-minute speech and then switch back to the music.
GOP senator John Cornyn of Texas called the White House move a major “pander,” but it is more than that. The man who declared at the Democratic convention in 2004 that “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America” has come a long way. He now wants a segment of Americans to see his speech dramatically changing immigration law, while he goes out of his way to avoid the broader national audience. Talk about dividing America after you talked so much about uniting it.
