For Tuesday’s edition of Prime Time, CNN host Chris Cuomo invited on pompous Toronto Star fact checker Daniel Dale to try to catch President Trump in a web of lies about immigration and the border. But while the anti-Trump journalists were trying to pounce on the President, they both shared a whopper of a lie when they falsely claimed Democrats weren’t for open borders. Cuomo went so far as to suggest he’s never heard a Democrat promote that.
In teeing up this supposed “fact-check,” Cuomo dismissed Trump’s immigration arguments with this pathetic strawman: “This is about, again, another straight attack on “hey, it's not me, it's got to be somebody else. Okay. It's Obama. Okay, it's the Democrats. You don't like my way, you know what they want? Open borders.” Take a listen.”
After being prompted by his host, Dale commended Trump’s claim as an “effective piece of political framing,” but then whined about how it was “rarely challenged for its factual inaccuracy by the media. And I think we should challenge it because it’s simply not at all accurate.”
While omitting the fact that the Democratic Party position on border security had changed radically over recent years, Dale argued that they were for certain restrictions:
But over the last ten years, they’ve offered billions of dollars and voted for billions of dollars in various kinds of security, to the Border Patrol for sensors, you know, for high-tech imaging systems. And so, it's simply not true to say that Democrats want open borders when they support all kind of restrictions that are simply not a wall.
Before going to the next fact-check, Cuomo proclaimed the ridiculous: “Never heard a single one say that they are for open borders. And we asked.”
Sorry, not sorry for bursting their fictitious bubble. Not only did Democrats support open borders, one of their top 2020 presidential candidates was “absolutely” for it.
Back in mid-February (before he announced he was running for president), former Texas Congressman and failed Senate candidate Robert O’Rourke told MSNBC host Chris Hayes that he was for tearing down existing border structures. “Yes, absolutely … I'd take the wall down,” he said.
O’Rourke went on to argue that the current border walls and fences, didn’t make the U.S. more secure:
Here's what we know. After the Secure Fence Act, we have built 600 miles of wall and fencing on a 2,000-mile border. What that has done is not in any demonstrable way made us safer. It's cost us tens of billions of dollars to build and maintain. And it's pushed migrants and asylum seekers and refugees to the most inhospitable, the most hostile stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border, ensuring their suffering and death.
So, clearly, both Cuomo and Dale were blowing some hot air. And given O'Rourke's popularity within the party and his serious campaign for president, they can't claim "no serious person is promoting open borders."
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time
April 9, 2019
9:14:47 p.m. Eastern(…)
CHRIS CUOMO: Next one, okay. This is about, again, another straight attack on “hey, it's not me, it's got to be somebody else. Okay. It's Obama. Okay, it's the Democrats. You don't like my way, you know what they want? Open borders.” Take a listen.
DONALD TRUMP: With the Democrats in Congress not willing to act they want to have open borders which means they want to have crime, they want to have drugs pouring into our country.
CUOMO: Now, Daniel before you grade this one, on this show I say all the time I do not get the Democrats refusing to own this opportunity here. There's opportunity to help the CBP. Give them what they need on the border. Expose how the fence was a farce as a complete fix. They’ve been very quiet, although the California Governor Gavin Newsom is in El Salvador, he got a message from there. We’re going to have him on later.
How do you judge this in terms of truthiness?
DANIEL DALE: Well, I think the phrase “open borders” is an effective piece of political framing. But that’s in part because it’s so rarely challenged for its factual inaccuracy by the media. And I think we should challenge it because it’s simply not at all accurate.
You know, of course, Democrats support a less restrictive immigration policy than Trump. For example, they don’t support a border wall. But over the last ten years they’ve offered billions of dollars and voted for billions of dollars in various kinds of security, to the Border Patrol for sensors, you know, for high-tech imaging systems. And so, it's simply not true to say that Democrats want open borders when they support all kind of restrictions that are simply not a wall.
CUOMO: In fact, the fencing that the President is saying he’s building right now, we have a fact check on that in a second, a lot of it is money appropriated by Congress including Democrats for more fencing.
DALE: Absolutely.
CUOMO: Never heard a single one say that they are for open borders. And we asked.
(…)
