Appearing as a guest on Tuesday's All In with Chris Hayes, supposedly right-leaning Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin was at it again -- appearing on MSNBC to mostly agree with a liberal host -- as she joined Hayes in fretting over President Donald Trump's proposal for a government agency that tracks criminal activity by non-citizens.
After oddly claiming that such an agency would likely be unconstitutional, suggesting that it would "create a mob mentality," Rubin -- who was even identified on screen as a "conservative columnist" -- took a swipe at Fox News, calling it a source of "nonsense" news consumed by President Trump.
Near the end of the show, Hayes brought up Trump's "alarming" VOICE proposal and worried that it would be "propaganda" as he posed:
There is this sort of contempt for expertise that we've seen, this sort of contempt for the establishment that -- and you see it in this -- and also a sort of desire to use the power of the state as essentially a propaganda outlet.
I mean, I find this sort of VOICE idea that the government's going to publish these sort of official reports of crimes committed by undocumented, unauthorized immigrants, or honor killing research is, you know, this is really using the power of the state in some pretty alarming ways.
Rubin, apparently not picking up on the fact that he was already referring to the VOICE agency idea, jumped in: "It sure is. And the VOICE thing is even worse. It just says 'aliens.' It doesn't even say 'illegal aliens.'"
As Hayes injected, "Oh, that's a good point," Rubin continued:
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So you could be a visa holder. You could be a green card holder. Basically, they're creating a mob mentality where they are trying to, once again, vilify immigrants. And this is a very disturbing pattern. I would actually argue that that is unconstitutional. We're not allowed to collect information and publicize information based upon national identity. But put that aside for a moment -- they don't care much about the Constitution either.
She then took a shot at Fox News as she added:
I do think it's very troubling, and I think that's why they hate the press so. They don't want independent, verifiable facts to get out there. They want to be the sole source of knowledge so they can put out their nonsense that they pick up from Fox or wherever they pick it up from.
