There are many reasons to criticize the Trump administration’s approach to illegal immigration. It is cruel, draconian, and antithetical to the pro-family values espoused by the Republican Party.
But it is an outright falsehood to say President Trump set the tone when he degraded all migrants as “animals.” Trump never said that about immigrants or refugees. It is one of the many lies about the Trump administration that simply will not die.
This particular falsehood resurfaced this week after the New Yorker published an overly flattering, softball interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The interview, titled “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the 2020 Presidential Race and Trump’s Crisis at the Border,” includes the freshman congresswoman saying the following in reference to her recent visit to a U.S. immigration detention facility [emphasis added]:
Almost no way. And … I mean … they were being — it was, it was the physical manifestation of Trump’s rhetoric in calling migrants animals. Because that’s how these women were being treated. Their hair was falling out, they had sores in their mouth due to the lack of nutrition in the food that they were being given.
The conditions at immigration holding facilities do appear to be dismal. Illegal immigrants are reportedly being badly abused. An estimated 188 detainees have died in ICE detention facilities since 2003, according to NBC News.
But Trump never called migrants “animals.” That is just a lie. It never happened.
Yet members of the press were eager once again to share it.
.@AOC on detention centers: “It was the physical manifestation of Trump’s rhetoric in calling migrants animals. Because that’s how these women were being treated. Their hair was falling out, they had sores in their mouth due to the lack of nutrition.” https://t.co/Hs3y2ZDPgG
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 11, 2019
From the Washington Post:
“There were just women on a concrete floor … and a concrete slab in front of the toilet, but no door. … It was the physical manifestation of Trump’s rhetoric in calling migrants animals. … Their hair was falling out, they had sores in their mouth…” https://t.co/wDfey8MdOP
— Dan Zak (@MrDanZak) July 11, 2019
From Al Jazeera’s The Stream:
“It was the physical manifestation of Trump’s rhetoric in calling migrants animals. Because that’s how these women were being treated.” https://t.co/F2ywMcUkl3
— Barry Malone (@malonebarry) July 12, 2019
For the record, Trump in 2018 called members of the brutal, barbaric Salvadoran gang MS-13, which is notorious for hacking its enemies to death with machetes, “animals.”
“We have people coming into the country or trying to come in, we’re stopping a lot of them, but we’re taking people out of the country,” Trump said, in that specific context. “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals.”
The press misreported the president’s remarks in 2018 when he first mentioned “animals,” failing to notice that he was discussing MS-13 with a member of law enforcement. Later, in April 2019, members of the press misreported the “animals” remark a second time after an obscure Twitter user resurfaced video of Trump’s comments, this time claiming it was specifically about asylum-seekers.
It is now July 12, 2019, and politicos and journalists are once again repeating this “animals” lie. At this rate, we should expect to see this story crop up again at least two or three more times by year’s end.
