On The View Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki faced tough questions from conservative co-host Meghan McCain about the administration reopening a border detention facility for migrant kids, which was heavily chastised by the media and the left during President Trump’s years.
Psaki was grilled by White House reporter Peter Doocy this week over the treatment of migrant children by the Biden administration, and she scrambled to rationalize how these kids in “containers” were different than how the left described the kids in “cages” during the Trump years. As McCain repeatedly pressed her on the hypocrisy, Psaki repeated the same excuses and refused to admit this was the same as what Democrats blasted under Trump (click "expand"):
MCCAIN: [I] feel like this is the same thing, and that you're still detaining kids at the border and it's not meaningfully different than what President Trump was doing.
JEN PSAKI: Well it’s absolutely not the same, Meghan. We are not ripping children from the arms of their parents. That is horrible and immoral and that’s something we saw in the last administration, but we're seeing kids are fleeing prosecution. They're fleeing really difficult circumstances in their home country and they're coming to the border and we need to figure out how to treat them humanely and keep them safe, and in a time of COVID, that means we had to open up an additional facility so we could have educational services, so we could have legal services and medical and health services and have those kids there treated humanely until we can find proper homes, family placements for these kids....
MCCAIN: I just wanted to know are you or are you not detaining children in a separate facility?
PSAKI: Well, Meghan, this is a facility that was reopened. It was revamped and it was redone to have these kids in a place where they could have access to educational services, health services so they could find proper homes. We can't send them directly to families that haven't been vetted. We've seen issues with that in the past. We can't have them all in the same HHS facility because of COVID, and we need to make sure there are safety protocols so they're not in beds next to each other.
MCCAIN: There's criticism all the way around including from people within your own party like AOC, and I think theres’s a lot of people see this as hypocrisy, and that it's just sort of potato, potato. Kids in cages or kids being separated from their families--Kids are being separated from their families!
As Psaki waffled some more, Joy Behar had enough and cut in to defend the Biden administration:
Jen, I was reading this morning that many of the children have been reunited with their parents already, that this is an ongoing thing. Isn't that so? That the Biden administration has already taken that step to reunite children with their parents? How is it in anybody's mind the same as what went on before? It's outrageous.
A thankful Psaki wholeheartedly agreed with Behar that it was “absolutely not the same.” Remember, this is the same Joy Behar who constantly moaned about horrible it was that kids were separated from their parents that she even defended Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez calling the facilities "concentration camps" and compared the treatment of migrant kids to the Holocaust.
The other questions to Psaki were a mixture of softballs and attacking Republicans from the most liberal hosts, Behar and Sunny Hostin. Neutral or critical questions came from Sara Haines and McCain on schools reopening and compromising on minimum wage raises to pass COVID relief.
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Read the transcript below:
The View
2/25/2021
MEGHAN MCCAIN: Hi, Jen. This week a migrant facility that operated under the Trump administration for only a month in September of 2019 is being reactivated to hold up to 700 children ages 13 to 17 throughout the campaign. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly spoke out against kids in cages. I feel like this is the same thing, and that you're still detaining kids at the border and it's not meaningfully different than what President Trump was doing.
JEN PSAKI: Well it’s Absolutely not the same, Meghan. We are not ripping children from the arms of their parents. That is horrible and immoral and that’s something we saw in the last administration, but we're seeing kids are fleeing prosecution. They're fleeing really difficult circumstances in their home country and they're coming to the border and we need to figure out how to treat them humanely and keep them safe, that means we had to open up an additional facility so we could have educational services, so we could have legal services and medical and health services and have those kids there treated humanely until we can find proper homes, family placements for these kids. This is incredibly difficult. It's heart-wrenching and it's a really difficult decision and it's the best decision we could make to keep these kids safe until we can get them to the right places and the right homes.
SUNNY HOSTIN: You know there are mounting calls---
MCCAIN: That's the same question that I think everyone has.
PSAKI: I'm sorry. Can you say that one more time?
MCCAIN: I just wanted to know are you or are you not detaining children in a separate facility?
PSAKI: Well, Meghan, this is a facility that was reopened. It was revamped and it was redone to have these kids in a place where they could have access to educational services, health services so they could find proper homes. We can't send them directly to families that haven't been vetted. We've seen issues with that in the past. We can't have them all in the same HHS facility because of COVID, and we need to make sure there are safety protocols so they're not in beds next to each other.
MCCAIN: There's criticism all the way around including from people within your own party like AOC, and I think theres’s a lot of people see this as hypocrisy, and that it's just sort of potato, potato. Kids in cages or kids being separated from their families--Kids are being separated from their families
PSAKI: Well Meghan what's important, and what we all have the responsibility to do, is communicate clearly about what this is, and what this is not. This is kids going to a facility run by HHS and we had to open a new one to make sure we have the safe protocols in order to address the COVID needs and the health and safety needs because we can't have as many kids in the former HHS facility. That's exactly what we did, but our objective is to get these kids into safe homes with their families as quickly as possible, and we are absolutely not doing what the former president did, and what frankly the current president and the current vice president objected to, which is ripping kids from the arms of their parents. That is not the policy of this administration, and not something we would do.
JOY BEHAR: Jen, I was reading this morning that many of the children have been reunited with their parents already, that this is an ongoing thing. Isn't that so? That the Biden administration has already taken that step to reunite children with their parents? How is it in anybody's mind the same as what went on before? It's outrageous.
PSAKI: It's absolutely not the same, and that's our objective. You know, we want these kids to be safe. We want them to be treated humanely. We can't send them back on the journey they just went on. That is not the right choice, but we need to make sure that we are finding their families. That's hard too. There's not the data and the history thanks to the last administration. So this is incredibly difficult, Joy. We want these kids to be with their families, to be reunited. We want them to be with family members. It's going to take some time, and we also want them to be safe during a time where there's a global pandemic, and that required the opening and revamping of this facility.
