In a Wednesday meeting with Californians who oppose the state’s sanctuary city laws, President Trump spoke about MS-13 gang members, who have repeatedly re-entered the United States illegally and commited horrific crimes.
Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims told Trump that she cannot report an MS-13 member to federal authorities unless he met a “certain threshold,” which she felt made her city unsafe. In response, Trump said: “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals. And we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before.”
You can read the transcript in the tweet below.
https://twitter.com/kathrynw5/status/996878341931192320
He is clearly saying that members of the MS-13 gang, who have stabbed teen girls to death, ripped their victims’ hearts out, beheaded them, removed their hands, and sexually tortured them, are behaving like animals. But here’s how a lot of media outlets covered this comment.
- The New York Times: Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals’ in Rant
- The Root: President Trump Called Undocumented Immigrants ‘Animals’ and That’s Exactly What He Meant
- Vox: Trump on deported immigrants: ‘They’re not people. They’re animals.’
- HuffPo: Trump Refers To Immigrants As ‘Animals.’ Again.
- Sky News: Trump: Illegal immigrants are ‘animals’
- ABC 10 News: Trump Calls Some Immigrants ‘Animals’ In Sanctuary Policy Meeting
One could make a fair argument that Trump ought not call MS-13 members “animals,” but to characterize Trump’s comment as being about all immigrants, undocumented or otherwise, is plainly false. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took this one step further and likened my immigrant father and grandparents to members of a brutal gang. Yes, really.
When all of our great-great-grandparents came to America they weren’t “animals,” and these people aren’t either.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) May 16, 2018
Leave my family out of this. Just because my dad and his family were immigrants does not mean they are anything like MS-13 gang members. The Hispanic heritage I share with some of these violent criminals does not mean I am at all invested in their fate nor offended if they are called “animals.” To assume otherwise is really insulting.
As I pointed out in an interview this morning, liberals seem to be having a hard time understanding what terrorism means. Many on the Left have assured us that the Palestinians swarming the Israeli border to plant explosives and kill as many Jews as possible are unarmed protesters, and that none of them are Hamas-aligned insurgents. But National Rifle Association members are totally terrorists! At least, that’s what Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in an interview with HuffPo earlier this week.
“The NRA is kind of just shy of a terrorist organization,” she told HuffPost. “They have done everything they can to perpetuate the culture of violence that we have in our country with the spread of assault weapons across the nation.”
To add some context, she was responding to NRA President Oliver North’s assertion that some Parkland students’ push for increased gun control is “civil terrorism.” Both North and Wasserman Schultz are being hyperbolic here, as neither the Parkland students or the NRA are terrorists.
Nevertheless, the Left’s confusion over who are terrorists and dangerous criminals this week has been truly stunning. Many are being willfully stupid or assuming that most Americans are dumb enough to believe them.
