On Good Morning America Tuesday, the ABC news team behaved as if they were Democrats’ collective lawyer, trying to defend and justify the reasons why Democrats won’t funder border detention facilities. After fretting over the poor conditions at these detention centers, congressional correspondent Mary Bruce and anchor George Stephanopoulos went out of their way to defend Democrats and blame President Trump for the lack of funding.
Stephanopoulos began by hyping the “shocking conditions” at one Texas border facility, where resources like toiletries were limited and illness spread because of the sheer number of people overcrowding the facility.
While ABC didn’t seem concerned about these same conditions under President Obama, they characterized this as problem for the Trump administration, not Congress. Stephanopoulos excused Democrats in Congress for holding up funding for these facilities, explaining they were just following their moral compass against the President’s immigration policies:
“[T]his border funding is being held up by some Democrats concerned if they approve the funding they're going to be approving the president's border policies they oppose,” he noted empathetically.
That prompted Bruce to go out of her way to defend Democrats against their critics. She ended by laying blame on Trump:
Yeah George everyone here on the Hill agrees that this emergency funding is needed but Democrats are divided because many of them are concerned that the president may use that funding to go ahead and fund tactics that they simply don't agree with to further fund his crackdown on immigration and so Democrats are trying to put conditions on this money and that now has the President threatening a possible veto.
Transcript below:
ABC’s Good Morning America
6/25/2019
7:08:51AM-7:10:31AM EST
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: We move to the crisis at the border where hundreds of migrant children have been moved out of a border patrol station after reports of shocking conditions. Overcrowding, lack of adequate food, soap, toothbrushes or supervision and our senior congressional correspondent Mary Bruce is on capitol hill where legislators expect to consider new border funding as early as today. Good morning, Mary.
MARY BRUCE: Good morning, yeah, Congress is trying to rush $4.5 billion in emergency aid to the border to try to deal with these conditions that are being described as absolutely dire. Hundreds of children have now been moved out of that holding facility in Texas after we are told young children were being left to care for each other and an attorney who met with many of these children told us they were sleeping on concrete floors. They were soiled and dirty lacking food and water. Many of them growing sick. Now it's not clear where these children are now being moved to. As of the end of May, there were 2400 children at these patrol stations along the border. These are meant to be just temporary holding facilities but many of them are ending up there for days, even weeks and that's because the actual shelters where conditions are much better are out of space and out of money. In all there are now 13,000 roughly children unaccompanied children staying at those shelters across the country.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Meantime, this border funding is being held up by some Democrats concerned if they approve the funding they're going to be approving the president's border policies they oppose.
BRUCE: Yeah George everyone here on the Hill agrees that this emergency funding is needed but Democrats are divided because many of them are concerned that the president may use that funding to go ahead and fund tactics that they simply don't agree with to further fund his crackdown on immigration and so Democrats are trying to put conditions on this money and that now has the President threatening a possible veto.
