Republican strategist Lance Trover was shut down on CNN’s “Table for Five” Saturday after making the false claim that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents were being “gunned down” on the streets of Chicago, Illinois.
The panel was discussing the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to a Venezuelan opposition leader on Friday despite President Donald Trump’s assertion that he was more deserving of the award when political advisor Jamal Simmons, former communications director for former Vice President Kamala Harris, argued why Trump was undeserving of the prestigious honor.
“Troops are moving into American cities, American pastors [are] being hit by pepper-spray bullets, people [are] being snatched out of cars by ICE agents,” Simmons said. “It's hard to see how anybody in the international community would say this man is the symbol of peace.”
Trover pushed back on Simmons’ comments, blaming the chaos on the streets of Democrat-run cities on “left-wing lunatics,” and not on the Trump administration.
“What you're talking about what's going on in the streets [is] the chaos caused by these left-wing lunatics who want to go in and corner the ICE agents who are just doing what they were told they needed to be [doing] by the voters last November!” Trover said.
Trover went on to claim that ICE agents had been “trapped” by protesters in Chicago and Portland, Oregon – likely referring to ongoing demonstrations in both cities – though no credible reports describe agents being surrounded or prevented from leaving by crowds.
Simmons fired back by asking Trover if he’d seen the images of a Chicago pastor that had been struck in the head with a pepper-spray bullet, to which Trover posed his own follow-up question.
“Did you see the picture of the ICE agents being gunned down on the streets of Chicago?” Trover said.
“Gunned down?” Simmons repeated. “I think that would have made more news.”
There is no credible evidence of ICE agents having been “gunned down” in Chicago or elsewhere. The only firearm fatalities that have been credibly reported as it relates to ICE are incidents in which ICE agents themselves fatally shot and killed an individual, such as Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, who was killed by ICE agents in September in Chicago.
The Department of Homeland Security, which ICE operates under, said that Villegas-Gonzalez had driven his car at officers before being fired upon by ICE agents, though footage of the incident has undermined DHS’s explanation for the killing.