CNN Talking Head Pushes Fake News That Kids Bus Is ICE Prison Bus 'For Babies'
Poor Ana Navarro. The CNN talking head has gotten more and more out there during the Trump administration, willing to believe anything that might mean the president is the most evil man in the world, no matter how untrue it may appear to be.
Now, she’s pushing one of the dumbest rumors that’s hit the internet in quite a while.
First, some background. As you’ve probably heard, the Trump administration has instituted a zero-tolerance policy regarding parents showing up with children at the border, either seeking asylum or trying to sneak in. This leads to the parents being separated from the children, at least temporarily, due to the fact that the parents have been arrested.
This has led to all sorts of reactions on Twitter. The most infamous was tweeted by luminaries such as Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau, BLM huckster Shaun King, Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour and others that showed children in detention centers.
The only problem: The article was from 2014. You may remember who was president then. His name wasn’t Donald J. Trump.
You would think that people would have gotten better at fact checking in the interim, but if liberals got better at fact checking I wouldn’t have a job so I’m kind of glad they didn’t.
The latest “OMG Trump’s ICE is taking babies” scam comes from this (since deleted) tweet, which accuses the government of commissioning a prison bus specifically to take babies into custody.
Now, you would think that maybe you would double-check this one before sending this out if you were either Antonio Arellano — a reporter for ABC’s Houston affiliate — or Navarro, who retweeted it with this message:
And you know what, Navarro? It’s not who we are.
See, one of the problematic things with Arellano’s tweet is that he didn’t actually read the webpage he linked to and/or got the pictures off of. These are things I thought a reporter was supposed to do. I’m guessing that if Houston’s ABC affiliate were the Daily Planet, Arellano would be the Jimmy Olsen. Or maybe even the guy getting Jimmy Olsen his coffee.
Here’s the webpage of the GEO Group, which runs the Karnes County Residential Center:
“The expansion created new demands to an already unique transportation mission by requiring larger capacity vehicles to provide offsite field trips,” the website reads.
“These field trips are part of the contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Field trips are provided to all children, ages four through seventeen enrolled in educational programs provided by the John H. Wood Charter School, located at KCRC. Field trips consist of going to a variety of places, such as the San Antonio Zoo, seeing a movie at the local theater, going to the park, etc.”
This cannot be who we are! We cannot take children who are detained because they were brought in this country illegally to the San Antonio Zoo! Dear God, not the zoo! And the local movie theater, too! Have you at last no shame, Jeff Sessions? Have you at long last no shame?
The only reason these falsified events exist is simple: Most of the people getting themselves worked up over things they know probably aren’t what they think they are don’t think we should have any immigration laws at all. They’re perfectly fine if parents smuggle their children into the United States, which is a profoundly dangerous and stupid thing to do. It benefits them politically, so why not?
Lies that are simply meant to muddy the water on an issue like this cannot be taken seriously, nor can those who repeat them. Let’s make sure they’re not able to get away with it.
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