White House press secretary Sarah Sanders defended President Trump on Thursday amid growing backlash over his use of the word “animals” to describe immigrant members of the MS-13 gang, saying she would have used an even stronger term.
Several Democratic lawmakers and members of the media criticized the president on Wednesday after he used the term during a meeting about illegal immigrants and sanctuary city policies. Some claimed he was referring to all immigrants, even though he was responding to an attendee’s complaint about MS-13 gang members.
“The president was very clearly referring to MS-13 gang members who enter the country illegally and whose deportations are hamstrung by our laws,” Sanders said.
“If the media and liberals want to defend MS-13, they’re more than welcome to. Frankly, I don’t think the term that the president used was strong enough,” she continued.
[Also read: Trump: Press purposefully lied about my ‘animal’ comment]
The Trump administration has arrested hundreds of members of the transnational gang, which operates under the gruesome motto: “Rape, control, kill.” Data released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2016 showed that 92 percent of individuals who were arrested in affiliation with MS-13 came to the U.S. illegally, with 16 percent having entered twice.
“MS-13 has done heinous acts,” Sanders told reporters, proceeding to use the president’s language as she described some of the crimes committed by the gang’s members.
“It took an animal to stab a man 100 times and decapitate him and rip his heart out. It took an animal to beat a woman they were sex trafficking with a bat 28 times, indenting part of her body. It took an animal to kidnap, drug, and rape a 14-year-old Houston girl,” she explained.
“I think the term ‘animal’ doesn’t go far enough and I think that the president should continue to use his platform and everything he can do under the law to stop these types of horrible, horrible, disgusting people,” Sanders said.
Sanders’ dismissal of the criticism Trump has received came hours after Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called the president’s statement “deeply offensive and racist.”
“Immigrants are not ‘animals,'” she tweeted.
“However repugnant their actions, MS-13 gang members are human beings…,” John Harwood, a top political reporter for CNBC, also wrote in a tweet.
