This week’s video from CNN’s Jake Tapper and FactCheck.org explains Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison’s tweet that the Supreme Court “ratified Donald Trump’s ‘total and complete shutdown’ of Muslims entry into the United States.”
Q: Did Sen. Bernie Sanders say that Christianity is an insult to Muslims?
A: He didn’t say that. He criticized a statement made by a presidential nominee as Islamophobic.
Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison tweeted that the Supreme Court “ratified Donald Trump’s ‘total and complete shutdown’ of Muslims entry into the United States.” That is a Trump quote from the presidential campaign. But his actual executive actions didn’t go that far.
This video from CNN’s Jake Tapper and FactCheck.org explains how Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen distorted the facts when she tweeted that the Trump administration does “not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions now says that the administration “never really intended” to separate families as part of its zero tolerance policy on illegal immigration. But Sessions had previously acknowledged that that’s what would happen under this policy.
During the ongoing family-separation controversy, President Donald Trump and others have made false or misleading statements on several immigration issues.
Q: Did President Donald Trump call for the creation of a “space force” to fight off an “alien attack”?
A: No. The president did request exploration of a “space force,” but it is unrelated to extraterrestrial activity.
In defending its “zero tolerance” border policy that has caused the separation of families, the Trump administration has argued that the Obama and Bush administrations did this too. That’s misleading. Experts say there were some separations under previous administrations, but no blanket policy to prosecute parents and, therefore, separate them from their children.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has resorted to a rhetorical sleight of hand in recent days to defend the Trump administration’s policy of separating families that illegally cross the border.
Q: Has the “head” of the Democratic Party been “hauled out in handcuffs”?
A: No. A partisan website has used decade-old charges against an Alabama Democrat as clickbait.