Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace confronted Kellyanne Conway about Vice President Mike Pence’s trip to the migrant detention center on his show, arguing that the video of the vice president’s visit did not align with his characterization of the facility.
Wallace read the pool report from Pence’s trip to the McAllen, Texas facility from the Washington Post‘s Josh Dawsey, which reads in part, “‘Almost 400 men were in caged fences with no cots, the stench was horrendous, some of the men were sleeping on concrete, they began shouting and wanted to tell us they had been in there 40 days or longer.”
Pool report from @jdawsey1 with @VP and GOP lawmakers on trip to McAllen, Tx, border patrol station. pic.twitter.com/jFv4L8xSwq
— David Nakamura (@DavidNakamura) July 12, 2019
Conway proceeded to interrupt Wallace to inform him that she “was there.”
“I understand that President Trump is trying to stop the flood of people across the border which contributes …” Wallace continued, before being cut off by Conway.
She said, “We’re also trying to accommodate those who are here.”
“… which contributes to the overcrowding, but how does it help for the president to minimize the situation and say it’s much better than what they had, or for Vice President Pence, in Kevin Corke’s piece, to say they’re all being well treated, when your own …” Wallace stated, adding, “I mean, you can look at the conditions there, it’s a disaster.”
He continued to ask her questions about the McAllen facility, but Conway kept pivoting to detention centers as a whole.
Conway finally relented and said, “What I would say is this: that that facility was meant to be, this is what I was briefed on, that facility was meant to be a 72-hour holding facility. It’s not equipped to keep single males who have broken the law by coming here and were apprehended. If you just want to let them go, then say that we just are open borders.”
During his trip to the facilities, Pence was interviewed by CNN senior White House correspondent Pamela Brown. He was later critical of the network calling them “so dishonest” for how they depicted the interview and the facilities they visited.
