During a panel debate on President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown on CNN, a guest panelist made a cutting remark about first lady Melania Trump’s pathway to citizenship, causing a social media uproar and sharp rebuke from MAGA supporters.
Political analyst Tiffany Cross also had some choice words for White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
On “CNN NewsNight” Tuesday, Cross questioned how Trump, a former fashion model, was able to get what’s known as an Einstein visa, an EB-1A visa, which is an employment-based, first preference visa for people with extraordinary skills and who are highly acclaimed in their fields.
“I just want to remind the viewers, his wife herself, a former nude model, got the Einstein visa to come over here, completely usurp the immigration system. What was her unique talent? I wonder that she was able to get that,” Cross said.
The first lady, a Slovenian national, became a U.S. citizen in 2006, one of only five people from Slovenia to obtain the coveted visa, after applying for it in 2000 when she was working as a model in New York and dating Donald Trump. Trump also sponsored her parents, who became U.S. citizens in 2018 through a family visa program opposed by the first Trump administration, according to CNN.
Cross, while pointing out the President’s expanding migrant targets, also slammed former President Barack Obama on his deportation record.
”Furthermore, he’s increasing these — these deportations because he’s trying to be competitive with his predecessor, who, I’m ashamed to say, Obama, who they called deporter-in-chief because he deported so many people, 430-something thousand, I believe, was the height of the year 2013,” she added.
At one point last week, the president paused immigration raids on agriculture operations and meat-packing facilities. Then this week, he walked that back, saying U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement agents would resume raids on those businesses.
“This entire immigration policy is the brainchild of Stephen Miller, a white nationalist, according to all the reporting, very documented reporting. He’s a white nationalist. Exactly. And that is the problem here,” Cross said.
In November of 2019, during Trump’s first term in the White House, the Southern Poverty Law Center obtained emails showing Miller’s connections to white nationalist groups, including the anti-immigration website VDARE and the editor of the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance, Jared Taylor. Miller was a White House aide at the time.
Former CNN host Greta Van Susteren, who went on to appear on Fox News and host on the right-wing conservative network Newsmax, defended Melania.
“This is why CNN is failing. It is not news anymore. BTW, I interviewed Melania Trump in 2015 and asked her when she started her first business-she said age 15 (I was hanging out fast food joints w/friends eating French fries at 15),” Susteren posted on social media.
“Melania actually started probably earlier than that. I highly suggest you get her book and read it Greta. ITS well worth the read. I can see why she has so much self-confidence is a hard worker and private. That is one intelligent women,” another fan of Melania Trump wrote.
“Tiffany will never have Melania’s charm, intelligence, beauty and class! And, no one will ever ask her to be a nude model,” yet another X user posted.
