Fox anchor attacks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for calling immigrant detention camps concentration camps
Bill Hemmer: “Does she not owe every Jew on this planet an apology?”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
From the June 18 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom:
BILL HEMMER (CO-ANCHOR): Did you hear what [Rep. Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez [D-NY] had to say? She's the Democratic congresswoman from New York. She described these concentration camps down there on the border. Let me just play a little bit of what she thought on -- I think it was on Instagram. Just watch here.
[BEGIN VIDEO]
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border. And that is exactly what they are. The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing.
[END CLIP]
HEMMER: I tell you, she's not afraid of throwing out these phrases. I don't know if she's been to the border yet. I don't believe I've seen a report that suggests that. Has she?
ART DEL CUETO (VICE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL BORDER PATROL COUNCIL): I haven't seen her down here in Arizona, I can tell you that. And when any individual make that reference, it just -- it loses all interest to me. It's disgusting to compare concentration camps to what the men and women are doing here protecting our country. In my eyes, honestly, you lose credibility. I've had it up to here with all these individuals constantly trying to compare concentration camps to what we're doing. I was just at one of the detention facilities. The kids were outside their cell. Because we have so many of them, they were out on the floor, playing puzzles, they were watching movies, eating cookies and what have you. She needs to come down here. You know what, I will offer to show her myself the area.
HEMMER: Art, she used the extermination of six million people. She used the phrase who are concerned enough with humanity to say “Never Again” means something. Has she ever been to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem or Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland or Dachau in Germany? “Never Again” is the phrase that Jews all over the world use to make sure that the extermination between 1939 and 1945 never happens again, and she's using concentration camps to describe what's happening on the southern border. How in the world is that acceptable? Does she not owe every Jew on this planet an apology?
DEL CUETO: I think it's disgusting to compare what the men and women do out on the border right now to that, and it is definitely a slap in the face to a lot of these individuals that have family members that actually went through concentration camps. I've said it many times: Some of these people need to crack open a history book before they make some comments.
HEMMER: She's not afraid to do it.
Previously:
Laura Ingraham calls child detention centers “essentially summer camps”