Appearing as a panel member on Thursday's Anderson Cooper 360, CNN political commentator Angela Rye tried to be the latest liberal to argue against President Donald Trump's travel ban targeting several Muslim countries on the basis that supposedly no one from those countries has committed a terrorist attack in the U.S.
After being called out by fellow panel member Kayleigh McEnany, who cited recent attacks by Somali refugees, Rye then switched to asserting that there have not been any deaths from such attacks in the U.S. as if being wounded does not matter so much.
At 9:47 p.m., Rye curiously excluded the year 2016 as she cited a time frame of the 1970s to 2015 in proclaiming: "And I think the other real challenge you have is in this particular order, the countries that he's banning, there has not been a single attack on U.S. soil by anyone from those countries from the '70s to 2015. That's a fact."
Right-leaning CNN political commentator McEnany jumped in to correct her: "That's not true. Somalia -- there were three knife attacks last year."
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At first, Rye seemed confused about what McEnany was informing her of until the liberal commentator then pivoted to talking about deaths rather than just general attacks: "This is about foreign nationals. So we were talking about foreign nationals -- no one was killed."
The two went back and forth:
MCENANY: Somali refugees -- 25 were wounded, though.
RYE: No one was killed on American soil.
MCENANY: Okay, wounded is just as bad, in my mind.
Rye then added:
I'm not saying we should undermine that, but I do think that we should -- if we're going to use 9/11 as the bait, then we should talk about the 9/11 countries. I think that if we're going to talk about these other countries, then we need to look at the data that actually exists.
After conservative CNN political commentator and NewsBusters contributor Jeffrey Lord injected, "The security ratings change constantly every day," Rye continued: "Sure, but I still think that we have to be honest about the fact that America's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, has been out touting this as if it's an answer to 9/11, and that's disingenuous. I'm just saying we should be honest."
