Former Republican Senator Rick Santorum on Thursday tried to defend President Donald Trump's declaration this week that he was deporting a lot of "animals" from the United States -- but his defense fell apart when confronted by several of the president's other past statements about immigrants.
During a panel with CNN host Chris Cuomo and guest Ana Navarro, Santorum tried to claim that Trump was only referring to MS-13 gang members as "animals" on Wednesday. However, Cuomo said that Trump hadn't earned the benefit of the doubt given all the other ways that he's tried to dehumanize immigrants in the past.
"If I were to list for you all the things he said about immigrants, how many would you own yourself and say, 'I agree with him about that?'" Cuomo asked. "'Most of the people coming from Mexico are drug dealers' and 'Africans live in huts' and 'This is what I think about Haiti, what kind of hole it is.' How many of those would you agree with?"
At this point, Santorum tried to completely dodge the question and began to say, "I think the president is entitled to say..."
"How many of those statements would you agree with?" Cuomo asked him again.
"I don't think it's important!" Santorum complained.
During a talk on immigration Wednesday, Trump said that, "We have people coming into the country, trying to come in -- we're stopping a lot of them, but we're taking people out of the country. You wouldn't believe how bad these people are. These aren't people. These are animals."
Watch the whole panel below.
