Welcome to The Lost Debate, a show for Politically Ecclectics. I'm Ravi Gupta. And today I'm

welcoming Michael Shear, who's the White House correspondent for the New York Times. He won a Pulitzer

or was part of a team that won the Pulitzer for their coverage of the pandemic and its health

and economic consequences. Most notably and relevant for our conversation today,

Mike is the co-author of Border Wars, which is a book all about the Trump administration's

immigration policy and posture.

So we're going to start on immigration, but then we'll talk more about Biden's larger political

project, the 2024 election and potentially even Gaza, because there's some

news there that Mike has reported on. Mike, welcome to the podcast. Hey, great. Happy to be here,

Robbie. It sounds like a fun conversation. Well, let's start with Gallup had a poll out this morning

that showed that significantly more Americans name immigration as the top

issue facing the United States. It's up even from a month ago pretty significantly. And the

Monmouth University had a poll out a couple days ago that showed a majority of people even

support a border wall for the first time ever.

So, okay, before we even get to the Biden administration policy, which is some really interesting recent news, what's driving this perception and how much of it do you see as a reality

at the border?

I mean, it's really amazing the way in which immigration and immigration as an issue, a political issue in

this country has shifted over the last decade or more, right? I mean, it used to split pretty

cleanly down kind of partisan lines. You had the conservative Republicans and the vast majority

of the Republican Party who saw themselves as the kind of border security folks

who wanted to, you know, make sure that the border was more secure and to keep more people out.

And you had the Democrats and the liberals largely who were more favorably inclined to let migrants

...