Watch: CNN panel piles on conservative defending DeSantis' Martha's Vineyard immigration stunt
A Republican campaign advisor got it from both sides on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday morning after he attempted to defend Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) over his sending immigrants seeking asylum to Martha's Vineyard in what is universally being considered a political "stunt."
During the panel segment, Jennings said what DeSantis was doing was necessary because it helps illuminate the problems at the border, which led both a liberal and a conservative co-panelist to call him out for disregarding the human factor of shipping people around the country to make a political point.
Former Barack Obama senior adviser Daniella Gibbs Léger got in the first shot at Jennings, telling him, "You know what? You can make a point about border security and we can have a conversation about comprehensive immigration reform and adding more money to support border states, but using people as political pawns -- these are people fleeing communism."
"I thought the Republican Party was the one against communism," she lectured. "To ship them to a place that doesn't have the facilities to take care of them -- you say blithely 'only there for a day.' Martha's Vineyard doesn't have capacity to do that. The Republican governor sent them to a place where there were facilities to take care of them."
She added, "This is MAGA extremism taking over this party. I get emotional talking about this because I remember when we were separating children, babies from their parents at the border with no care about reuniting them. This is what this is too. These migrants were lied to and misled; they thought they were going someplace else and were given appointments across the country for Monday. So they're setting them up for failure."
Former Donald Trump administration official Alyssa Farah Griffin then jumped in.
"Here's the thing," she began. "We have a crisis at the border, humanitarian, national security, full stop. Vice President Kamala Harris said on another network last week the border is secure -- it's not."
'That said, I disagree with the stunt on almost every level," she continued. "We know the Biden administration is relocating people within the country, migrants within the country to take some of the strain off the border states, but we cannot use human beings as pawns."
"If this was a serious effort by Governor DeSantis, he would have called [Massachusetts Republican] Governor Charlie Baker and say, 'I need all resources available, we need to house these people, set up places where they can process asylum claims and meet with you all.' This was meant purely for Twitter and to drive the conversation."
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