During an overwrought panel discussion on Friday’s MSNBC Live With Stephanie Ruhle, former Barack Obama campaign staffer Stephanie Cutter and political analyst Michael Steele took turns comparing illegal immigrant detention centers along the U.S. southern border to Nazi death camps.
“We can’t find a solution to this problem without harming children? Without putting them into concentration camps?,” Cutter pleaded. Steele doubled down on the extreme rhetoric: “I call this a concentration camp for kids because that’s exactly what it’s turning out to [be]. When you give kids 22 hours of lockup time and two hours of air time, what else can it be?”
He then went even further, offering viewers this ominous warning: “And if this is where this country is going, the American people need to wake up and pay attention. Because your kids could be next.”
Sadly, that kind of irresponsible fearmongering has become a common refrain on MSNBC. On Thursday’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough implied that immigrant children being separated from their parents was akin to children being sent off to lethal gas chambers at Nazi concentration camps. Scarborough repeated the comparison in even more direct terms on Friday.
On Thursday afternoon, Deadline: White House anchor Nicolle Wallace likened the Trump administration to the brutal gang MS-13 and accused them of “terrorizing children.”
Despite such hyperbolic language, an NBC News report on Thursday went inside one of the detention centers and found very comfortable conditions, with leather sofas, flat-screen televisions, video game systems, and billiard tables.
Here is a transcript of the June 15 exchange between Cutter on Steele:
9:26 AM ET
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STEPHANIE CUTTER [FMR. OBAMA 2012 DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER]: We are, or used to be, America’s greatest democracy. We can’t find a solution to this problem without harming children? Without putting them into concentration camps?
MICHAEL STEELE [MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST]: And I would even say, Stephanie, to that point, it’s not even an interpretation of the law, it is a policy.
STEPHANIE RUHLE: A new policy.
STEELE: And a policy that has been invoked by the President of the United States and dictated to his attorney general, who goes out and quotes the Bible – by the way, a passage that was used to justify slavery in this country – to justify encamping children. I call this a concentration camp for kids because that’s exactly what it’s turning out to. When you give kids 22 hours of lockup time and two hours of air time, what else can it be? And if this is where this country is going, the American people need to wake up and pay attention. Because your kids could be next.
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