Why on earth is Dr. Phil involved in immigration raids? Another made-for-TV event from a reality star president
Many outrageous and unsettling things happened in Los Angeles over the weekend. On Friday, multiple immigration raids, in downtown's Fashion District and outside a Home Depot in Paramount, sparked a not unusual response that led to police involvement, during which many, including union official David Huerta, were arrested.
Ostensibly dissatisfied with the handling of the situation, President Trump, over objections from both L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, made the highly unusual — and potentially illegal — decision to send in the National Guard. Tensions escalated and by Sunday, portions of L.A. freeways were shut down as some protesters and/or outside agitators vandalized downtown stores, defaced buildings, hurled rocks from downtown overpasses onto law enforcement vehicles and set fire to a few Waymo cars. Trump's border advisor, Tom Homan, threatened to arrest Newsom if citizens of this sanctuary state continued to interfere with immigration raids, and Newsom publicly dared him to do it, adding that California would be suing the Trump administration for making the situation worse by sending in the National Guard. On Monday, Homan appeared to backtrack on his threat while Trump said he would support it.
It was both a little — no one should have been surprised that ICE raids in L.A. would spark protests and these were, relatively speaking, small and nonviolent — and a lot. Sending in the National Guard was an obvious military flex, designed to to bait Angelenos while perhaps distracting Americans from Trump's far greater troubles.
But nothing said 'this is a made-for-TV event brought to you by the same reality-star-led administration that proposed making legal immigration into a television competition' as the presence of Phil McGraw. Who, after being embedded with ICE officials during raids in Chicago earlier this year, spent some of this weekend kicking it with Homan in L.A.'s Homeland Security headquarters.
As first reported by CNN's Brian Stelter, Dr. Phil was there to get 'a first-hand look' at the targeted operations and an 'exclusive' interview with Homan for 'Dr. Phil Primetime' on MeritTV, part of Merit Street Media, which McGraw owns.
Dr. Phil is, for the record, neither a journalist nor an immigration or domestic policy expert. He isn't even a psychologist anymore, having let his license to practice (which he never held in California) lapse years ago.
He is instead a television personality and outspoken Trump supporter who was on hand to … I honestly don't know what. Provide psychological support to Homan as he threatened to arrest elected officials for allowing citizens to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech while using local law enforcement to prevent any violence or destruction of property that might occur? Offer Homan another platform on which he could explain why Trump is breaking his own vow to target only those undocumented immigrants who have committed violent crime?
Or maybe just provide a familiar face to help normalize rounding up people from their workplaces and off the street and sending in the National Guard when this doesn't appear to be happening smoothly enough.
There is, of course, the chance that McGraw asked Homan some tough questions. In a clip from the interview posted on X, he appears to begin his interview by asking what exactly happened this 'busy' weekend in L.A. Homan replies that multiple law enforcement agencies were 'looking for at-large criminals' and serving search warrants as part of a larger money laundering investigation, including at one company where 'we knew about half of their employees were illegally in the United States' and in 'service of those warrants, we arrested 41 illegal aliens.'
Still, after years of claiming to be nonpolitical, McGraw gave the president a full-throated endorsement at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally in 2024 while denouncing diversity initiatives. McGraw said the name of his media company pays homage to Americans who made it 'on hard work … not on equal outcomes or DEI.'
McGraw's presence during immigration raids, and his choice as the person who should interview Homan even as things escalated in L.A., would seem downright weird if it weren't so politically perilous. Merit Street Media is one of a growing number of new news outlets claiming to offer 'fresh perspective' on 'American values' while hewing almost exclusively to Trump's MAGA message and offering 'safe spaces' to conservatives. Then-presidential candidate Trump told Dr. Phil in August — in reference to those involved in his felony conviction — 'revenge can be justified' and that he would win California if Jesus were counting the ballots.
Using McGraw as a platform to explain Trump and Homan's divisive immigration policy and incendiary decision in L.A. most certainly underlines the criticism that these raids, and the fallout they will inevitably cause particularly in sanctuary states and cities, are being conducted with maximum spectacle awareness. If McGraw isn't a direct part of the policy, he appears to be a big part of its publicity.
Which is a bit alarming. Over the years, McGraw has been criticized about his treatment of guests (some of whom sued) and staff. In 2020, he issued an apology for comparing the mounting deaths from COVID-19 to the (far smaller) number of deaths due to drowning in swimming pools.
After his fellow Oprah alum, Dr. Mehmet Oz, ran for the Senate last year, McGraw shrugged off the notion that he would ever follow suit, saying he 'doesn't know enough about it.' 'When you start talking to me about geopolitics and all the things that go into that — I'm a neophyte, I don't think I would be competent to do that.'
Nor is there any indication that he is well-versed in immigration or constitutional law. If Trump and Homan honestly wanted a recognizable TV brand to help walk Americans through the legal complications of what happened in L.A. over the weekend, they should have asked Judge Judy.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
24 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘There has to be a better way': CA Senator Alex Padilla to introduce immigration reform legislation
(INSIDE CALIFORNIA POLITICS) — California Senator Alex Padilla will introduce legislation on Monday that would provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. The bill, dubbed 'Renewing Immigration Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929,' would provide access to lawful permanent resident status by advancing the date for eligibility under immigration registry. Immigration registry is an existing process that allows individuals to apply for permanent resident status on the basis of their long-term residency in the U.S. In order to qualify, individuals must have entered the country on or before a specified date and must demonstrate good moral character and continuous residence since their entry. After its creation in 1929, Congress advanced the registry date four times, most recently in 1986, when the date was set at January 1, 1972. Only non-citizens who entered the United States by that date are eligible to apply for permanent resident status through registry. The date is now so far in the past that few individuals are eligible. Padilla's bill would: Update the outdated 'Registry' cutoff date so that long-term residents may qualify for lawful permanent resident status if they have lived in the U.S. continuously for at least seven years prior to filing an application under the Registry Preempt the need for further congressional action by making the Registry eligibility cutoff rolling, instead of tying it to a specific date, as it is now Provide a pathway to a green card for Dreamers, TPS holders and other forcibly displaced individuals, and highly skilled members of the workforce, such as H-1B visa holders, who have been waiting years for a visa number to become available Padilla's announcement comes as new polls show growing frustration over President Donald Trump's mass deportation effort and just one month after he was forcibly removed from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's press conference. 'It's not just the general public that has seen the cruelty and the overreach of Trump's deportation agenda,' Padilla said. 'The public opinion polls out there show that the vast majority of the American people see it for what it is and they support immigration. They know that it's a good thing and that not just DREAMers and farmworkers, but so many others deserve that pathway to legalization and potentially, eventually citizenship.' Padilla spoke to Inside California Politics host Nikki Laurenzo about the legislation and its likelihood of advancing in the Senate. Padilla said he has not secured support from any of his republican colleagues. 'Look, it may be tough. It certainly will be a lot of work, but I think the time is now,' Padilla said. 'Not a day has gone by since I've been in the Senate that I'm not talking to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle about the need to modernize our immigration system. And I point to California as an example. We're the fourth largest economy in the world, not despite our diverse and immigrant communities in California, but because of their contributions as workers, as consumers, as entrepreneurs.' Padilla says his proposal is based on a simple principle: if you've built a life here, you deserve a chance to stay. 'Let me be clear, if they truly were only focusing on dangerous, violent criminals, as Donald Trump likes to say repeatedly, there would be no debate, there would be no discussion,' Padilla said. 'But what we are seeing on a daily basis is the reality that the majority of the people being arrested, being detained, being deported have no violent criminal history.' Padilla also weighed in on whether former Vice President Kamala Harris should run for California governor in 2026. Inside California Politics airs this weekend during the following times: KTLA: Sunday, July 27 at 5:30 Saturday, July 26 at 6:30 Saturday, July 26 at 6:30 p.m. and Sunday, July 27 at 8:30 Sunday, July 27 at 5:30 a.m. and 11:00 Sunday, July 27 at 8:30 Saturday, July 26 at 11:00 p.m. and Sunday, July 27 at 7:30 a.m. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
USA Today
38 minutes ago
- USA Today
Trump's golf trip to Scotland reopens old wounds for some of his neighbors
BALMEDIE, Scotland − Long before talk of hush-money payments, election subversion or mishandling classified documents, before his executive orders were the subject of U.S. Supreme Court challenges, before he was the 45th and then the 47th president: on a wild and windswept stretch of beach in northeast Scotland, Donald Trump the businessman was accused of being a bad neighbor. "This place will never, ever belong to Trump," Michael Forbes, 73, a retired quarry worker and salmon fisherman, said this week as he took a break from fixing a roof on his farm near Aberdeen. The land he owns is surrounded, though disguised in places by trees and hedges, by a golf resort owned by Trump's family business in Scotland, Trump International Scotland. For nearly 20 years, Forbes and several other families who live in Balmedie have resisted what they describe as bullying efforts by Trump to buy their land. (He has denied the allegations.) They and others also say he's failed to deliver on his promises to bring thousands of jobs to the area. Those old wounds are being reopened as Trump returns to Scotland for a four-day visit beginning July 25. It's the country where his mother was born. He appears to have great affection for it. Trump is visiting his golf resorts at Turnberry, on the west coast about 50 miles from Glasgow, and at Balmedie, where Forbes' 23 acres of jumbled, tractor-strewn land, which he shares with roaming chickens and three Highland cows, abut Trump's glossy and manicured golf resort. On July 28, Trump will briefly meet in Balmedie with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to "refine" a recent U.S.-U.K. trade deal, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Golf, a little diplomacy: Trump heads to Scotland In Scotland, where estimates from the National Library of Scotland suggest that as many as 34 out of the 45 American presidents have Scottish ancestry, opinions hew toward the he's-ill-suited-for-the-job, according to surveys. "Trump? He just doesn't know how to treat people," said Forbes, who refuses to sell. What Trump's teed up in Scotland Part of the Balmedie community's grievances relate to Trump's failure to deliver on his promises. According to planning documents, public accounts and his own statements, Trump promised, beginning in 2006, to inject $1.5 billion into his golf project six miles north of Aberdeen. He has spent about $120 million. Approval for the development, he vowed, came with more than 1,000 permanent jobs and 5,000 construction gigs attached. Instead, there were 84, meaning fewer than the 100 jobs that already existed when the land he bought was a shooting range. Instead of a 450-room luxury hotel and hundreds of homes that Trump pledged to build for the broader community, there is a 19-room boutique hotel and a small clubhouse with a restaurant and shop that sells Trump-branded whisky, leather hip flasks and golf paraphernalia. Financial filings show that his course on the Menie Estate in Balmedie lost $1.9 million in 2023 − its 11th consecutive financial loss since he acquired the 1,400-acre grounds in 2006. Residents who live and work near the course say that most days, even in the height of summer, the fairway appears to be less than half full. Representatives for Trump International say the plan all along has been to gradually phase in the development at Balmedie and that it is not realistic or fair to expect everything to be built overnight. There's also support for Trump from some residents who live nearby, and in the wider Aberdeen business community. One Balmedie resident who lives in the shadow of Trump's course said that before Trump the area was nothing but featureless sand dunes and that his development, carved between those dunes, made the entire landscape look more attractive. Fergus Mutch, a policy advisor for the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, said Trump's golf resort has become a "key bit of the tourism offer" that attracts "significant spenders" to a region gripped by economic turmoil, steep job cuts and a prolonged downturn in its North Sea oil and gas industry. Trump in Scotland: Liked or loathed? Still, recent surveys show that 70% of Scots hold an unfavorable opinion of Trump. Despite his familial ties and deepening investments in Scotland, Trump is more unpopular among Scots than with the British public overall, according to an Ipsos survey from March. It shows 57% of people in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland don't view Trump positively. King Charles invites Trump: American president snags another UK state visit While in Balmedie this time, Trump will open a new 18-hole golf course on his property dedicated to his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was a native of Lewis, in Scotland's Western Isles. He is likely to be met with a wave of protests around the resort, as well as the one in Turnberry. The Stop Trump Coalition, a group of campaigners who oppose most of Trump's domestic and foreign policies and the way he conducts his private and business affairs, is organizing a protest in Aberdeen and outside the U.S. consulate in Edinburgh. During Trump's initial visit to Scotland as president, in his first term, thousands of protesters sought to disrupt his visit, lining key routes and booing him. One protester even flew a powered paraglider into the restricted airspace over his Turnberry resort that bore a banner that read, "Trump: well below par #resist." 'Terrific guy': The Trump-Epstein party boy friendship lasted a decade, ended badly Trump's course in Turnberry has triggered less uproar than his Balmedie one because locals say that he's invested millions of dollars to restore the glamour of its 101-year-old hotel and three golf courses after he bought the site in 2014. Trump versus the families Three families still live directly on or adjacent to Trump's Balmedie golf resort. They say that long before the world had any clue about what type of president a billionaire New York real estate mogul and reality-TV star would become, they had a pretty good idea. Forbes is one of them. He said that shortly after Trump first tried to persuade him and his late wife to sell him their farm, workers he hired deliberately sabotaged an underground water pipe that left the Forbes – and his mother, then in her 90s, lived in her own nearby house – without clean drinking water for five years. Trump International declined to provide a fresh comment on those allegations, but a spokesperson previously told USA TODAY it "vigorously refutes" them. It said that when workers unintentionally disrupted a pipe that ran into an "antiquated" makeshift "well" jointly owned by the Forbeses on Trump's land, it was repaired immediately. Trump has previously called Forbes a "disgrace" who "lives like a pig." 'I don't have a big enough flagpole' David Milne, 61, another of Trump's seething Balmedie neighbors, lives in a converted coast guard station with views overlooking Trump's course and of the dunes and the North Sea beyond. In 2009, Trump offered him and his wife about $260,000 for his house and its one-fifth acre of land, Milne said. Trump was caught on camera saying he wanted to remove it because it was "ugly." Trump, he said, "threw in some jewelry," a golf club membership (Milne doesn't play), use of a spa (not yet built) and the right to buy, at cost, a house in a related development (not yet constructed). Milne valued the offer at about half the market rate. When Milne refused that offer, he said that landscapers working for Trump partially blocked the views from his house by planting a row of trees and sent Milne a $3,500 bill for a fence they'd built around his garden. Milne refused to pay. Over the years, Milne has pushed back. He flew a Mexican flag at his house for most of 2016, after Trump vowed to build a wall on the southern American border and make Mexico pay for it. Milne, a health and safety consultant in the energy industry, has hosted scores of journalists and TV crews at his home, where he has patiently explained the pros and cons − mostly cons, in his view, notwithstanding his own personal stake in the matter − of Trump's development for the local area. Milne said that because of his public feud with Trump, he's a little worried a freelance MAGA supporter could target him or his home. He has asked police to provide protection for him and his wife at his home while Trump is in the area. He also said he won't be flying any flags this time, apart from the Saltire, Scotland's national flag. "I don't have a big enough flagpole. I would need one from Mexico, Canada, Palestine. I would need Greenland, Denmark − you name it," he said, running through some of the places toward which Trump has adopted what critics view as aggressive and adversarial policies. Dunes of great natural importance Martin Ford was the local Aberdeen government official who originally oversaw Trump's planning application to build the Balmedie resort in 2006. He was part of a planning committee that rejected it over environmental concerns because the course would be built between sand dunes that were designated what the UK calls a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the way they shift over time. The Scottish government swiftly overturned that ruling on the grounds that Trump's investment in the area would bring a much-needed economic boost. Neil Hobday, who was the project director for Trump's course in Balmedie, last year told the BBC he was "hoodwinked" by Trump over his claim that he would spend more than a billion dollars on it. Hobday said he felt "ashamed that I fell for it and Scotland fell for it. We all fell for it." The dunes lost their special status in 2020, according to Nature Scot, the agency that oversees such designations. It concluded that their special features had been "partially destroyed" by Trump's resort. Trump International disputes that finding, saying the issue became "highly politicized." For years, Trump also fought to block the installation of a wind farm off his resort's coast. He lost that fight. The first one was built in 2018. There are now 11 turbines. Ford has since retired but stands by his belief that allowing approval for the Trump resort was a mistake. "I feel cheated out of a very important natural habitat, which we said we would protect and we haven't," he said. "Trump came here and made a lot of promises that haven't materialized. In return, he was allowed to effectively destroy a nature site of great conservation value. It's not the proper behavior of a decent person." Forbes, the former quarry worker and fisherman, said he viewed Trump in similar terms. He said that Trump "will never ever get his hands on his farm." He said that wasn't just idle talk. He said he's put his land in a trust that specified that when he dies, it can't be sold for at least 125 years.
Yahoo
44 minutes ago
- Yahoo
There seems no end in sight to asylum hotel protests - as five intense minutes by a roundabout in Norwich proved
It was an unlikely backdrop for a protest - a large roundabout on the outskirts of Norwich. But behind the trees flanking one of the carriageways was the reason hundreds had come - another hotel being used to house asylum seekers. Just as towns and cities around the country have seen protests in recent days, most prominently in Epping in Essex where at least 18 arrests have been made, this time the focus was the Brook Hotel. It started peacefully - bar the beeping of horns of passing cars and the chants from protesters on both sides. But in a flash, it all changed. Witnesses say one of the pro-immigration protesters had approached the much larger group wearing a balaclava and in seconds the pent-up fury spilt over as an angry crowd surged towards the police, shouting and swearing. Some tried and failed to hold back the furious crowd urging peace as a small group of police and protesters rolled down a verge, while backup officers emerged from a side road. But as quickly as it started, it was all over - an intense five minutes that seemed to take the wind out of their anger. Trying to find anyone willing to speak was almost impossible: "We don't talk to the mainstream media," a common phrase. But David Beane, from nearby Costessey, a veteran and the father of an eight-year-old boy, had clear views he wanted to share. "I know homeless people from the forces. I got out of the force, no dental treatment, I can't get a doctors. They get everything," he said. "I'm all up for immigrants coming, but sign the paperwork. You show who you are, you come in, you abide by our laws." It was David's first time at a protest. Another local man attending was Glen. "They're in there, free rent, free everything," he said. Referring to the hotel, he added: "Do you know they are even getting meal tickets to go in that pub with, and they supply meals in there?" Read more: There have been protests in nearby Diss too this week. The Park Hotel in the town has now informed the Home Office that it will close altogether if it is ever made to house single men rather than families at the location. Back in Norwich, torrential rain was enough the bring an end to the day's event. Only a few stragglers remained two-and-a-half hours after it had all begun. But it seems likely they will be back. There seems to be no end in sight to the current spate of disruption.
