As the media moves into week two of President Trump versus "The Squad," the focus has shifted from Trump's original tweets to "How dare you call The Squad unpatriotic." CNN Newsroom co-host Jim Sciutto has been at the forefront of this goalpost-shifting and on Monday's show he battled Trump campaign adviser Mercedes Schlapp on Trump's attacks on The Squad.
As Schlapp delivered passionate objections to the Squad's rhetorical excesses, Sciutto tried to interject that it's not anti-American to compare the border patrol to Nazis, or claim Jewish legislators have dual loyalties. Hey, that's just a "policy dispute."
JIM SCIUTTO: But, you see the point I’m making here is that our country is built on that kind of dialogue where people from one party criticize the policies of another. Why does it make it anti-American?
MERCEDES SCHLAPP: Because if you look at The Squad and you literally dissect their statements, it is incredibly concerning, okay. When you look at Omar and when she focuses on let's be compassionate and tell a judge that we need to be compassionate towards these men who were planning to join ISIS, when they start going after Jewish lawmakers saying that there's dual loyalty. When you have another congresswoman part of The Squad saying that she has a calming feeling about the Holocaust, that is incredibly concerning—
SCIUTTO: Well to be fair, Mercedes you know well…
SCHLAPP: When you have a fact that you have Cortez basically calling our border patrol agents Nazis and our detention centers—
SCIUTTO: Okay
SCHLAPP: --concentration camps, while these Democrats have done nothing,--
SCIUTTO: Mercedes, some of those, some of those --
SCHLAPP: very little to stop the continued humanitarian crisis that we're seeing at the border. That to me is concerning. When they are--
SCIUTTO: That's a policy dispute, but they are.
SCHLAPP: They are socialist ideas, Jim, that are not -- should not even be --
SCIUTTO: That's a policy question.
SCHLAPP: That's anti-American and that's a problem.
These aren't just policy questions. The only thing Schlapp mentioned that could be accurately called a policy difference was when Omar asked a judge to show leniency to a group of men accused of planning to join ISIS. Omar's hypnotism, claims about dual loyalty, and "all about the Benjamins" comments are not policy questions, no matter how hard people try to spin it as just "raising questions about money in politics" or "criticism of Israel or Benjamin Netanyahu."
Tlaib's Holocaust comments, in addition to being tremendously insensitive and historically wrong, aren't just policy quibbles. Neither are Ocasio-Cortez's personal attacks on the border patrol or other grandstanding efforts that have nothing to actually solve the problem, all while earning the ire of even her fellow Democrats.
Sciutto also tried to rebut Schlapp by quoting Jonathan Greenblatt, leader of the Anti-Defamation League, who has fiercely come to the defense of Israel-bashers Tlaib and Omar. The ADL, Sciutto insisted, is "fighting every day to fight anti-Semitism in the country," and Greenblatt tweeted "Donald Trump using Israel to defend his blatant racism only hurts the Jewish community. He doesn't speak for any of us. We call on all leaders to condemn these tweets and using Jews as a shield."
He didn't note Greenblatt was an adviser to President Obama -- oh, so was Sciutto, by golly -- and so these are not nonpartisan statements. Schlapp shot back that Trump is the best president Israel's ever had.
