Secretary of State Marco Rubio, while on Meet the Press, hit back at the media on Sunday, claiming that the media have been misrepresenting the facts across the board when it comes to immigration reporting.
From the segment (slightly edited for clarity):
“That’s a misleading headline. Three US citizens, ages four, seven, and two, were not deported. Their mothers, who are illegally in this country, were deported. The children went with their mothers. Those children are US citizens. They can come back into the United States if their father or someone here who wants to assume them. But ultimately, who was deported was their mother, their mothers who were here illegally, the children just went with their mothers. But it wasn’t like you guys make it sound, like ICE agents kicked down the door and grabbed a two-year-old and threw him on an airplane. That’s misleading. That’s just not true.”
The host, Kristen Welker, tried to make it about due process:
“Just to be clear, because I do want to get to the overhaul at the State Department. Is it the US policy to deport children, even US citizens with their families, and I hear what you’re saying without due process? Just to be very clear there.”
Secretary Rubio was not having it:
“Well, no, no, no, no, no. Again, if someone’s in this country unlawfully, illegally, that person gets deported. If that person is with a two-year-old child, or has a two-year-old child and says, I want to take my child with me, well then what you have two choices. You can say, Yes, of course. You can take your child, whether they’re a citizen or not, because it’s your child, or you can say, yes, you can go, but your child must stay behind.”“And then your headlines would read, us holding hostage a two-year-old, four-year-old, seven-year-old, while the mother is deported. So the mother, the parents, make that choice. I imagine those three US citizen children have fathers here in the United States, they can stay with their fathers. That’s up to their family to decide where the children go. Children go with their parents. Parents decide where their children go. The US deported their mothers, who were illegally in America.”
Talk about a fact check.
Not done with taking the press on today, Team Trump sent Tom Homan on Face the Nation to, once again, embarrass Margaret Brennan, who as LI readers remember, compared free speech to Nazism.
From the exchange (edited for clarity):
“First of all, I disagree with the judge. It was due process that the female had due process at great taxpayer expense, and was ordered by an immigration judge after those hearings, so she had due process. Again. This is parenting 101, you can decide to take that child with you, or you can decide to leave a child here with a relative or another spouse. Having a US citizen child doesn’t make you immune from lawsuits in this country. American families get separated every day by law enforcement. Thousands of times a day. When a parent gets put in jail, the child can’t go with them. If you’re an illegal alien and come to this country and you decide to have your US citizen child, that’s on you. You put yourself in that position.”
After these exchanges, people on Twitter were quick to point out just how badly the media has been portraying immigration stories since Trump took office:
The media has lost all credibility.
Dear LI readers, is it too much to ask the media to tell the truth?
I think we all know the answer to that.
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