Asked to comment on remarks made by Attorney General Jeff Sessions earlier in the day about how the Trump administration’s policy of ripping children out of the arms of their immigrant parents is somehow justified by the Christian Bible, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday afternoon said she could not respond specifically to the AG’s claims but said “it is very biblical to enforce the law.”
“That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible,” Huckabee Sanders said in response to the question by CNN’s Jim Acosta as she appeared to glance at notes on her podium.
Watch the exchange:
Sanders comments on family separations at the border: “It is very biblical to enforce the law” https://t.co/5DiL1C4FHt
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 14, 2018
“Where does it say in the Bible that it’s moral to take children away from their mothers?” asked Acosta.
But Huckabee wasn’t interested in answering that question, however, and accused Acosta of trying to put words into her mouth and talking over her. “I know it’s hard for you to understand,” she said to the reporter, “even short sentences, I guess.”
WATCH: During a tense exchange over immigration policy, White House Press Sec. Sanders tells CNN correspondent Jim Acosta that it is "hard for you to understand even short sentences, I guess." pic.twitter.com/qvGQe3WsIA
— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 14, 2018
Citing increasingly horrific stories of the children of immigrant and asylum-seeking parents being separated at the border, Acosta said “can you imagine the horror these children must be going through” and asked, “Why is the government doing this?”
“Because it’s the law,” Huckabee Sanders responded. “And that’s what the law states.”
And it was downhill from there as subsequent reporters pushed back against the false claims the press secretary was making—namely that their family separation policy was “the law” and not a specific policy choice pushed by President Trump and promoted at the DOJ by Sessions on multiple occasions.
Pressed by journalist Brian Karem if she, as a parent herself, had any empathy for what these migrant families were going through, Huckabee Sanders refused to answer:
Reporter asks @PressSec about the separation of immigrant children from their parents at the border.
"Sarah, you're a parent. Don't you have empathy for what these people are going through?" pic.twitter.com/Jh41PUR3Uj
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 14, 2018
Turns out, there’s nothing in the Bible that says you have to answer questions you don’t like.
Top Photo | Attorney General-designate, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., takes his seat on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017, after a break in his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. (AP/Alex Brandon)
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