On Monday morning before the government shutdown ended, CNN’s New Day co-host Chris Cuomo sided with illegal immigrants and specifically DREAMers, arguing to White House director of legislative affairs Marc Short that addressing both border security and DACA shows that Republicans don’t truly care about these supposedly maligned group.
“There [is] probably fair criticism trying to get too much done on this bill. The big dividing line, is really ‘a bill of love’ for DREAMers in the heart of GOP? Because right now, there doesn't seem to be any consensus,” Cuomo smugly argued before bringing on Short.
Cuomo went right after Short and a new Trump campaign referring to illegal immigrants as violent criminals, complaining that “it is unfairly demonizing illegal entrants into this country” and “[i]f the President wants a bill of love, consider are you guys running an ad that paints illegal entrants as monsters?”
Short pointed to a DHS report about “2,500 people on a terror watch list trying to get into the United States each and every year,” so it’s crucial that the country sees border improvements, but Democrats have chosen to concoct “a manufactured shutdown.”
The CNN partisan later wanted to dwell on this ad [emphasis mine]:
CUOMO: [M]y seven-year-old gets what the message is in the ad but it's just not true. Is there a security threat? Yes. Are there illegal entrants who pose criminal threats and are here to create crime? Yes. But by numbers and statistics, you cannot make the case that the illegal entrance are more dangerous than native born citizens but you are making that case. You're saying they're the terror threat even though you know the statistics show that either white supremacists or homegrown people and radicalized here are a bigger threat than illegal entrance. You know if you look at the prison population or the criminal — the committing of crimes by percentage of population, they are lower than they are the rest. So why make them monsters when that's not true in the data?
SHORT: So, Chris, I don't think that we're trying to make everyone here monsters. What I think you would look and say last week when the study came out we also showed that three of the four terrorist convicted in the United States are foreign born.
Moments after this, Cuomo dropped the asinine assertion that protecting DREAMers and protecting our borders are in conflict:
CUOMO: But look, he said “bill of love.” Here’s what I don’t get. I don't get how you put out an ad like that and say it’s “bill of love?” I don't get how you attach the wall or security concerns to the DACA bill and say that you care about the DREAMers If you care about them, do it solo. If you attach it to the wall, then they're not your priority, then finding a pathway is not your priority.
Cuomo also read aloud this Trump tweet sent out during the interview:
Short responded in agreement: “The Democrats have decided we're going to stop paying American troops. We're going to stop paying Custom and Border Control Agents. We're going to not fund children's health insurance over a manufactured issue because their base is upset at all the administration's being accomplished.”
Cuomo wouldn’t acknowledge Democrats playing politics besides a brief mention near the end of the nearly 12-minute-long marathon, instead fretting that Trump and Republicans are “divid[ing] people” instead of treating DREAMers with “dignity and respect.”
With friends in the media like this, it’s no wonder that the far-left was comfortable in shutting down the government.
