Friday night’s episode of Laura Ingraham’s The Ingraham Angle on Fox News Channel featured a segment with Tennessee Representative Bruce Griffey (R-Paris) regarding his bill to fund President Trump’s southern border wall.
Laura Ingraham’s television interview with the freshman legislator came two days after she tweeted about the bill, as reported by The Tennessee Star.
Griffey’s bill HB 0562 is being sponsored in the Tennessee Senate by Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) as SB 1504.
In her introduction prior to the break, Ingraham said, “We have highlighted a number of inventive funding ideas to help build that wall over the last several months. Well, up next is a Tennessee lawmaker who says that he’s figured it out.”
Ingraham continued after the break, “Tennessee Representative Bruce Griffey filed legislation earlier this week that would establish a fee imposed on customers for transmitting money through certain entities. Well, that’s a mouthful.”
Explaining further, Ingraham said “Basically, what this does is require a levy on money transfers from Tennessee to Mexico and then set aside those fees collected for the border wall.”
Ingraham noted that Arizona, Montana and West Virginia are currently or have previously considered similar proposals.
Ingraham asked Griffey if his proposal could “actually get the job done if a number of the legislatures banded together.”
https://youtu.be/2OUBevwPmmM?t=3157
Griffey responded in the affirmative. “Certainly. If we had enough state legislatures that would all get together and get on the stick and get something done.”
“I’m so frustrated that some of our Republican representatives are not fully supporting President Trump as I feel they should and propose this legislation,” Griffey added.
While Ingraham initially responded asking Griffey to name some names of those not supporting President Trump with similar legislation, she went on to say that Mike Rogers in Alabama recommended the same thing, pushing a bill back in the summer of 2017 that was focused on Honduras.
Ingraham stated that, “Honduran immigrants in the United States sent back $4.33 billion just in the year 2016 to 2017, $4.33 billion. So, you tax it at 2 percent over 10 years, there’s your wall. Bingo $20 billion. So, he pushed this back then, didn’t get any traction. I think it’s a no brainer. It’s a complete no brainer.”
Griffey agreed, explaining further why he brought forward the bill, “I don’t know why it hasn’t been done more fully and I just felt like I’m a freshman legislator in the state of Tennessee, I want to do my part to support the President and the efforts to build a secure border wall.”
Ingraham admittedly then went off the topic of the border wall to talk about the reactions on social media relative to the “black face” controversies, racism, pictures and language, saying there seems to be a new focus on the south in general, although not specifically including Tennessee. She said the on-line conversation has gone to the position that Alabama, Florida, Virginia and Mississippi are so filled with “a bunch of white southern racists that they can’t be redeemed.”
“It’s unfortunate,” responded Griffey, but said that one of the bright spots may be that this conversation comes out.
As Ingraham wrapped up the segment, she concluded that Griffey’s was “an interesting idea for trying to build that border wall,” and “we’ll take all of them that we can get.”
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Laura Baigert is a senior reporter with The Tennessee Star.
Kudos to Rep. Griffey for having the chutzpah to file this bill!
Also, kudos to House leadership, for creating an environment where freshmen Legislators feel comfortable putting up whatever legislation that they feel is needed. Recent leadership would NEVER have allowed this kid of thing!