David Gregory’s “Meet the Press” replacement Chuck Todd kicked off his tenure as moderator of the NBC Sunday morning news program by pressing President Barack Obama over his decision to delay action on immigration until after the November midterm election.
“You made a decision to delay any executive action until after the election,” Todd says to Obama in an interview (above) that will air on Sunday. “What do you tell the person that’s going to get deported before the election that this decision was essentially made in your hopes of saving a democratic Senate?”
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Obama appeared somewhat flustered by Todd’s line of questioning, and avoided answering his question directly by restating his position on the issue.
Todd told the President he believes the decision to delay executive action is “election year politics,” but Obama maintained he was taking his time with following through on his promise in order to build more public support after it began dwindle when “a surge of kids who were showing up at the border got a lot of attention.”
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“The truth of the matter is– is that the politics did shift midsummer because of that problem,” Obama said. “I want to spend some time, even as we’re getting all our ducks in a row for the executive action, I also want to make sure that the public understands why we’re doing this, why it’s the right thing for the American people, why it’s the right thing for the American economy.”