He slips! He slides! He dodges every which way and even Jake Tapper can't pin Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, down on whether she supports sanctuary cities.
To give Tapper credit, he tried to pin Mook down twice but the Clinton campaign manager managed to slip away without giving anything resembling a yes/no answer on this morning's State of the Union on CNN. Before Mook was even finished uttering his first sentence you just knew there was no way he was going to really answer Tapper's question.
JAKE TAPPER: When it comes to Hillary Clinton, I have to ask about sanctuary cities, cities where they do not enforce federal immigration laws and that sometimes means that people who are criminals who are in this country illegally end up getting free and committing worse crimes. It's just a fact that this does happen. Does Hillary Clinton consider sanctuary cities to be a problem?
ROBBY MOOK: Well, first of all Jake, as you mentioned, we do think this is a really important difference between both of the candidates and Secretary Clinton has released a comprehensive plan for immigration reform. This is something she has pledged to do in the first hundred days. We cannot have a situation where anybody is coming into this country and committing crimes. And so she has, as I said, put out plans to make sure that we are removing violent criminals from this country but that can happen at the same time that we're not tearing families apart and that we are making sure that hard working people who have been here for a very long time come out of the shadows, come into the system, pay those back taxes, become citizens and so actually our economy can continue to grow.
So did you spot anything resembling a real answer anywhere in that Mook word blizzard? Well, apparently neither did Jake Tapper so he made a second attempt to elicit an answer which was not to come.
TAPPER: I'm not clear though. Does she want to end sanctuary cities or not? You said that people should not be coming into this country illegally but a Clinton campaign spokeswoman last year said quote "Hillary Clinton believes that sanctuary cities can help further public safety and she has defended those policies going back years." Does she support sanctuary cities or not?
MOOK: Well, I think that's too narrow a view of the situation. We need comprehensive immigration reform and part of comprehensive immigration reform is making sure that law enforcement has the tools to find these violent criminals and get them out of the country and for people who do not have legal status right now that we put them on that path to citizenship.
So again Mook declines to answer the question by latching on to the "comprehensive immigration reform" security blanket. Its the way liberals can say "amnesty" without actually saying the toxic word.
Jake Tapper ends the interview acknowledging that Mook still hasn't answered his question.
TAPPER: Alright. I look forward to further clarity on the sanctuary cities issue specifically.
Good luck with finding further clarity on that issue, Jake.
