Rachel Maddow, Jen Psaki Mock Voter Concerns About Illegal Immigration During Super Tuesday Panel

MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Jen Psaki mocked voter concerns about illegal immigration during the network’s coverage of the Super Tuesday primaries, expressing their disbelief that the issue could be so salient in this year’s elections.

Psaki, bringing up the issue, said, “I live in Virginia. Immigration was the number one issue,” to laughs from the rest of the panel. Maddow chimed in, joking that “Virginia does have a border with West Virginia,” to which Psaki replied incredulously, “you’re thinking, like, what?”

The issue of immigration has — for the first time since 2019 — become the most important problem voters say the United States faces, according to a Gallup poll released in late February. Twenty-eight percent of respondents cited immigration as the country’s biggest challenge, while the government came in second place at 20 percent and the economy come in third at 12 percent. Immigration is the only issue on which respondents to the Gallup poll had moved over preceding month; in January, only 20 percent of Americans surveyed said it is the most pressing problem with which the U.S. contends.

Fifty-five percent of respondents — an all-time high — believe immigration to be a critical threat to American interests, representing an 8-point increase from 2023. {snip}

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