Conservative commentator Ann Coulter has doubled down on her claims that immigrant children in detention camps are actors that are part of a ‘political stunt’ designed to destroy the United States.
Coulter has faced backlash since she first made the comments on Fox News on Sunday night as she weighed in on the pressure President Donald Trump is facing to end his zero-tolerance policy at the Mexico-US border.
The Trump administration’s policy has so far resulted in about 2,000 children being separated from their parents so that the face immediate deportation.
Following her comments, TMZ asked Coutler on Tuesday if she had seen the photos of immigrant children being held in cages after being separated from their parents.
Conservative commentator Ann Coulter has faced backlash since she first made the comments on Fox News on Sunday night claiming that immigrant children in detention camps are just child actors
‘Yes have you heard the tapes, it’s weird. I think they need to improve their scripts. They’re saying Mommy and Daddy. You might want to put it in Spanish next time,’ she said, implying again that they were just child actors.
On the issue of the young children being separated from their parents, Coulter said: ‘They’re being separated from coyotes and drug mules’.
‘The parents could stay in Mexico. You don’t get to get out of committing crimes in this country because you have a baby.’
Coulter went on to say immigrants crossing the border illegally posed a ‘serious issue’.
‘They are trying to wreck our country through a political stunt, that’s what is going on,’ she said.
‘It’s going to be the end of our country’s history if we don’t stop letting these hordes in. It will never stop. This is a political movement to transform our country into Mexico.’
Coulter claimed that the children filmed crying at the US-Mexico border after being separated from their parents were child actors working from scripts
Coulter said on Tuesday that she had seen the photos of immigrant children being held in cages but said that the parents could stay in Mexico
Coulter’s comments were part of a 90-second rant in which she claimed that children were being used as anchors to bring more relatives into the country illegally
Her comments on Tuesday came after Coulter caused outrage following her earlier appearance on Fox News during which she claimed that the children filmed crying at the border were child actors.
‘These child actors weeping and crying on all the other networks 24/7 right now — do not fall for it, Mr President,’ she warned Trump.
‘I get very nervous about the president getting his news from TV.’
Coulter’s comments were part of a 90-second rant in which she claimed that children were being used as anchors to bring more relatives into the country illegally.
The other panelists, Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is dating Donald Trump Jr, and former Republican Rep Jason Chaffetz, appeared to have agreed with her remarks until she called children ‘child actors’, at which point host Steve Hilton tried to correct her.
Coulter talked over his interjections and defended her comments saying that they came from ‘not a conservative publication’ – The New Yorker.
During the segment, which also featured Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle and former Republican Rep Jason Chaffetz, host Steve Hilton attempted to correct Coulter’s comment but was unable to get a word in
Coulter claimed her source was an article in The New Yorker, possibly one published in 2011 by writer Suketu Mehta, who responded to Coulter’s comments on Twitter Monday afternoon
The article had supposedly described how ‘these kids are being coached, they’re given scripts to read by liberals’, adding: ‘Don’t fall for the actor children.’
When Hilton finally managed to get a word in, he simply said: ‘Thank you for getting that off your chest.’
Social media users were quick to slam Coulter, calling her ‘nasty’ and ‘heartless’ for suggesting that the children are faking their anguish.
As the clip gained traction on social media several journalists called for Coulter to share the specific New Yorker article she had referred to.
She responded by tweeting a link to an article published in 2011, which documents how immigrants are encouraged to exaggerate the risk they face in their home countries in order to gain asylum.
‘If you had 3 functioning brain cells you’d be able to find 1 article on how phony asylum cases are,’ she wrote in the tweet on Monday.
The man who wrote the 2011 article, Suketu Mehta, tweeted back at Coulter saying: ‘If you had 3 functioning brain cells, @AnnCoulter, you wouldn’t be mentioning my New Yorker article about asylum to support your racist positions.
‘It’s not about child actors, it’s about narratives demanded of adults by a broken asylum system.’