After months of saying there was no crisis at the southern border, the media have now changed their tune, as has the Democratic Party, but that does not mean that Democrats are at peace with this. In the aftermath of an embarrassing defeat, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive firebrands for living in "their Twitter world." On Monday's CNN Newsroom, co-founder of The Beat DC, Tiffany Cross joined co-host Poppy Harlow and CNN analyst Molly Ball to take Ocasio-Cortez's side and to declare that the poor conditions at the border are due to the fact that the migrants are not white.
Cross began by arguing that the division between Pelosi and the four Democratic congresswomen who voted against the initial House funding bill for the border was, "an ideological and a tactical division."
Despite the near non-stop coverage of the crisis and the conditions at the border detention facilities, Cross declared that, "They're all four women of color who voted against this bill. And the reality, that I think there's trouble reconciling within this country, if these were white babies being treated this way in these detention facilities, if these were white women being held in overcrowded facilities, being told to drink from toilets, there certainly would be more of a national outcry."
Cross then accused President Trump of misusing funds, but could only come up with the Fourth of July ceremony in Washington as an example of such wrongdoing. She proceeded to condemn ICE for using facial recognition technology gathered through drivers licenses and praise the four congresswomen for not trusting Trump with any ICE funding.
Responsible people know that the reason for the overcrowding at the border detention facilities is that the facilities were built to combat an illegal immigration problem that was predominantly concerned with single, working aged-able bodied males from Mexico. What we have now is a vast assortment of migrants from south of Mexico who are bogged down in a lengthy-backlogged legal process to determine if they meat the criteria to be granted asylum, but apparently you can just go on CNN and spout any nonsense you want, because the hosts will not offer any push back.
Here is a transcript for the July 8 show:
CNN
CNN Newsroom10:31 AM ET
TIFFANY CROSS: Can I push back real quickly, Poppy…POPPY HARLOW: Yes, of course
CROSS: I hear you Molly and I completely agree, but I do think this is an ideological and a tactical division within these women. They're all four women of color who voted against this bill. And the reality, that I think there's trouble reconciling within this country, if these were white babies being treated this way in these detention facilities, if these were white women being held in overcrowded facilities, being told to drink from toilets, there certainly would be more of a national outcry. And I think that's so important and resonating with these four women, who are saying we cannot trust this Administration. And there's been continual evidence of Donald Trump misusing funds. I mean, we just saw on July 4th, as a candidate and president he has misused funds. So I think there is something about these women saying “Why would we blindly trust this man? Why would we allow ICE to have more funding” we just found out today that ICE is using facial recognition technology. States haven't passed laws to allow that. Undocumented immigrants didn't know they were turning their information over to ICE, so I think these are relevant issues.
HARLOW: You're referencing the "Washington Post" reporting that says that ICE has been using facial recognition technology to scan photos of the DMV of driver's licenses even of people not accused of committing crimes and that raises a whole host of other questions, certainly.
