Fox News contributor Rachel Campos-Duffy is doubling down and playing the conservative victim after being excoriated for describing child detention centers as “better than some of the projects” that African Americans live in.
Campos-Duffy visited The Ingraham Angle to discuss Melania Trump’s shockingly inappropriate jacket during her visit to a child detention center. “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” was written across the jacket’s back. Even Campos-Duffy called it a “head scratcher” and said she would not have worn such a jacket (though, predictably, she also took a gratuitous swipe at Michelle Obama for wearing $500 sneakers while feeding the homeless).
Then it was on to Happy Family Separation talk. You may recall that earlier in the week, host Laura Ingraham likened the child detention centers to summer camps. She was far from the only Fox News pundit talking up the Happy Child Detention Centers experience.
Campos-Duffy joined the club:
CAMPOS-DUFFY: The detention centers are far safer than the journey that these little children just came on.
And I will say this, people aren’t stupid. I spoke to some African-Americans who say, gosh, the conditions of the detention center are better than some of the projects that I grew up in. People are looking at the sentencing, let’s not smear our border patrol. They are trying to do the best they can. These children were brought here under horrible, irresponsible circumstances.
Unfortunately for Campos-Duffy, her comment said more about her lack of sensitivity than the well-being of migrant children taken from their families. Whatever the problems in public housing, children are not separated from their families and locked up.
However, in text messages to the New York Times, Campos-Duffy doubled down on her sentiment – and played the conservative victim (my emphases added):
“The centers are not ideal, but they are safe, supervised, and provide three square meals, instruction and other resources,” she wrote. “Those are indeed better conditions than many poor American children have.”
[…]
“I mentioned it because I HAD just spoke to an African American who complained to me about never seeing this level of media attention about Black kids being separated from their parents and that some of the facilities he saw looked nicer and safer than the projects he grew up in,” she wrote.
[…]
On Friday, Ms. Campos-Duffy wrote that she was not surprised at the reaction to her comment, which she said came from the political left.
“Conservative minorities are accustomed to being attacked for telling the truth,” she said.
Watch Campos Duffy defend child detention centers below, from the June 21, 2018 The Ingraham Angle, via The Wrap.
Notice how her “some” went to “one.” I can buy she spoke to some black Trumper or conservative who played the projects whataboutism game. It’s akin to the “What about black-on-black crime?” whataboutism Fox loves so much whenever Black Lives Matter is in the news.
Idiot Trump rejects Obama’s more humane issuing of GPS tracking ankle bracelets because at $75 per day they cost too much. So we locked these people up for $775 per night? Seriously?
We all know history is going to judge America harshly for these harsh xenophobic immigration policies. So how stupid are the folks who support Trump in this endeavor?
Trump sycophants on TrumpTV apologizing for his bigotry like the ones in this video? What can one say? They are what they are and I expect no less from a propaganda factory like Fox News. When history judges them as the amoral scumbags they are watch them pretend it never happened.
First, they were “better than private/boarding schools”; then, they were “better than summer camp”; now, they’re “better than African American housing projects”.
I suppose next they’ll say they’re “better than living in a tent on the street” — without a shred of irony.
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This person was not being attacked – she was appropriately being criticized for saying something completely offensive. If she did not want to hear criticism for saying offensive things, it might have helped for her to have not been saying offensive things.