Steve Cortes appears on CNN (screen grab)
A former GOP congressman shut down a former Trump adviser for spewing spin on the president's border wall demands.
Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican who until earlier this year was a US congressman from the Quaker state, admitted during the CNN panel that he voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006 -- and that he couldn't see why Donald Trump insists on building on top of what's already there.
"Last I checked, there are 700 miles of barriers on the southern bored," Dent said. "We don't need a 2,000-mile long fence on the southern border. I haven't heard one expert who said we needed it."
Host Jim Sciutto cut to play footage of Trump at Ramstein Air Base in Germany -- but Steve Cortes, a member of Trump's 2016 campaign, kept cutting in.
Cortes insisted that Dent's statement that no experts want a 2,000-mile- long concrete barrier at the US-Mexico border is "demonstrably false."
The member of Trump's Hispanic Advisory Council noted that the US Customs and Border Patrol Union has on many occasions endorsed the president's call for a border wall.
"Not 2,000 miles," Sciutto said. "That is different, Steve."
"They've argued that we need a wall," Cortes continued -- and the host, bemused, asked "across all 2,000 miles?"
"They have argued that we need a wall," the Trump supporter continued. "They've used the word 'wall.' Maybe not all 2,000 but a lot more miles than we have right now."
Bakari Sellers, a CNN commentator and himself a former Democratic state legislator in South Carolina, slammed Cortes for insisting that because Trump ran with the border wall as the foundation of his platform, he has a blank check to do as he pleases.
Later in the segment, Dent put the argument to rest.
"The Border Patrol wants a transparent barrier," he said. "They want something they can see through. They haven't asked for a concrete barrier, to my knowledge. I was on that Homeland Security committee, I knew what they were talking about. They needed detention beds, they needed roads -- access roads -- along the border."
"They weren't talking about a 2,000-mile concrete barrier," he added. "It's just not true."
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