In the midst of an MSNBC panel discussion on Donald Trump sending military troops into U.S. cities to help ICE round up undocumented immigrants, the normally even-keeled Jonathn Lemire lashed out at the Department of Homeland Security for deploying videographers to film arrests and then turn them into propaganda videos.
Over the weekend, DHS head Kristi Noem was filmed at various locations in besieged Chicago as protests broke out as people were snatched off of streets.
Noem, as well as Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino, were each filmed by DHS employees in reflective vests, and those videos were edited together and shared on social media to, as Lemire accused, be enjoyed by Trump’s MAGA base.
Speaking with the “Morning Joe” panel, Lemire said, “I mean, the footage here, as you say, is so extraordinary. And the reason why we also have so much footage is because they filmed the whole thing.”
“Like there's cameras, you can see there's footage of these agents, some of them carrying cameras, and there's a slick, slickly produced Hollywood-style trailer for social media that's put out, and it's just such an obscene — it's just an obscene display of what? Not how the American military should be used.”
“And then again, going back to how the media is used,” co-host Joe Scarborough contributed, “you always got the sense from the very beginning that the video of the immigrants being marched into the El Salvador prison. Yes, it's just done in the most glossy way. I mean, a lot of those guys have been released at this point, but it was just, again, they wanted the video playing.”
“They wanted to play it not only so their base could see it, so people in the media could see it, and Democrats could see it, and they could have the reaction that they wanted to get, right?’ he added. “And it's the same thing. They get this slickly produced video of an invasion of an American city. Why? Because the base will love it and because the media and democrats will be shocked.”
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