On Sunday, CBS’s 60 Minutes and NBC Nightly News acted like P.R. reps for far-left illegal immigration groups, standing up for illegals and teaming with liberal churches leading “peaceful rebellions” to knock those seeking to enforce America’s laws.
Host and CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley was the brains behind the lengthy 60 Minutes report, fawning over the “peaceful rebellion growing against federal immigration law, and the interpretation of that law by the Trump administration.”
Pelley provided conservatives with a textbook case of the left’s love with churches whenever they push liberal causes versus demonizing conservative ones, in the name of violating the wall between church and state.
“More than 800 houses of worship across the country have volunteered to shelter illegal immigrants and their families who face deportation, daring federal agents to step through their stained glass doors. The churches and synagogues are joining more than 600 cities and counties that have declared themselves sanctuaries: Ordering their police not to detain people if it's only because of their immigration status,” swooned Pelley.
Pelley’s pathetic advocacy hinted that a far-left United Methodist church in Philadelphia was Lincolnesque simply because the church was conceived by someone Abraham Lincoln admired:
PELLEY: In no other venue of the law has so much of the nation stood in defiance of Washington. Philadelphia's Arch Street Methodist Church was built by Abraham Lincoln's favorite minister.
HYNICKA: We are a sanctuary church.
PELLEY: And 155 years later, Reverend Robin Hynicka is on the same chapter and verse.
Of course, Arch Street is what the UMC calls a “reconciling congregation,” meaning that it’s pro-LGBTQ and preaches far-left causes. One visit to their Facebook page would behold posts with #PhillyResistance and promoting transgender Christians, making them full-blown leftists.
Scott Pelley, I’m confused. I thought churches that advocated one party or cause over another was forbidden and damaging. It must be nice to be liberal.
When Hynicka hinted that churches are supposed to fight things that involve “evil, injustice, or oppression,” Pelley asked him to clairfy if that meant what the Trump administration is doing on illegal immigration and Hynicka agreed with an approving Pelley looking on.
The progressive pastor got off easy from Pelley, but the same couldn’t be said for ICE’s Daniel Ragsdale. Pelley badgered him if he had any “concern...about separating families in deportations.”
“As a human being, I know it is traumatic for folks. But I will also say that the rule of law is something that America is built on. But this seems to be the one area where the narrative about separating families, you know, sort of gets a little bit ratcheted up,” Ragsdale responded.
Doing the bidding of the Democratic Party, Pelley ruled that the Trump administration hasn’t just focused on deporting “the bad guys” but “about 11,000 undocumented people with no criminal records” even though, you know, people who are breaking the law by being in the U.S.
Pelley only offered muted pushback to not just Hynicka but Philadelphia Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney too, meekly informing Hynicka that “preach morals and yet, you're breaking the law” while telling Kenney that the city probably couldn’t afford to lose federal funding.
Speaking of Kenney, Jonah Goldberg exposed how Pelley let slide a misleading talking point that the Philadelphia mayor pushed about an exclusively anti-Italian slur some decades ago being W.O.P. to signify Without Papers. Politifact, call your office.
He also minimized those opposed to helping illegal immigrants: “Well, you know, there are people shouting at the television right now, saying: “If they came illegally, they shouldn't be here. It's a terrible thing, but they shouldn't have come.”
As per the case in most illegal immigration stories, there’s a sob story here and there was one for a man who, according to Pelley, had received amnesty under the Reagan deal in 1986 before losing it under the George W. Bush administration. Pelley touted the man and his family as living “the American dream” but stand to lose it because of Trump
The segment wound down with perhaps the best possible questions to showcase the bias in how Pelley conducted himself with Hynicka versus Ragsdale:
PELLEY [TO RAGSDALE]: If the priority is serious criminal offenders, why are we seeing deportation orders for little old ladies and middle-aged men who've never committed a crime?
(....)
PELLEY [TO HYNICKA]: Do you worry that the government might take steps against sanctuary congregations across the country?
Once again, the leftist, anti-Trump anchor is sudden concerned about churches having to do something that goes against their beliefs. Fortunately for Arch Street, their cause was more justified in the media’s eyes than anything the Little Sisters of the Poor may want to do on contraceptives.
Less than an hour earlier, NBC Nightly News pushed the same sad song, pathetically referring to such towns as “so-called sanctuary cities” even though that’s exactly what they are for people in the United States breaking the law.
“In this country, the latest battle over illegal immigration is unfolding in Texas. That's where a small border town with funding from a major Hispanic advocacy group is suing the state over a new law. That law bans so-called sanctuary cities but critics argue it’s unconstitutional and will trigger racial profiling,” Sunday anchor Kate Snow explained.
Correspondent Gabe Gutierrez reported from El Cenizo, Texas where 20 percent of the town’s population (roughly 3,800) are illegal immigrants.
Touting two soundbites from Mayor Raul Ryes claiming that stopping law-breakers “hinders relationships between the police departments and the community and that's dangerous,” Gutierrez noted how the Texas law “would fine local governments up to $25,000 a day, potentially send police chiefs to jail, and remove elected officials if they refuse federal requests to help with immigration enforcement.”
With the only opposing viewpoint in Republican Governor Greg Abbott, Gutierrez fretted to him that “[c]ritics are saying that this is a show me your papers law” which Abbott denied and pointed out how there must be probably cause to arrest or pull some over.
Gutierrez touted a woman fearful for her safety who didn’t want her face shown and then concluded how such fines in the law “could wipe out this town’s entire $250,000 annual budget in two weeks.”
