Former first lady Laura Bush called them “eerily reminiscent of . . . internment camps.”
Summer camps.
“Since more illegal immigrants are rushing the border, more kids are being separated from their parents and temporarily housed in what are essentially summer camps, or as the San Diego Union-Tribune described them today as looking like basically boarding schools,” she said on her show, “The Ingraham Angle,” on Monday.
Amid growing outrage over the practice of separating children from parents detained at the border — and the conditions of their care — prominent conservatives have taken to the airwaves to defend the Trump administration’s actions.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, for example, called the concentration camp comparison “a real exaggeration, of course. In Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country.” He later told Fox News: “We’re doing the right thing. We’re taking care of these children.”
On Sunday, conservative commentator Ann Coulter said, without evidence, that the migrant children photographed at detention facilities or otherwise in distress were child actors.
“These child actors weeping and crying on all the other networks 24/7 right now; do not fall for it, Mr. President,” she said on Fox News. “I get very nervous about the president getting his news from TV.”
And on Monday, Ingraham said liberals “seized on the separated children and turned the entire image into a political weapon.”
Ingraham may also be in the crossfire: Her comments have some, including an anonymous group that aims to drive advertisers away from purveyors of hate speech, calling for a boycott of her show’s advertisers.
The images in question showed children locked inside cages formed by metal gates, sleeping in groups on child-size mats under thermal blankets that look like giant sheets of aluminum foil. The photos were released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Later in the broadcast, Ingraham said a lot of people were upset at the summer camp description and backtracked. She alluded to the San Diego Union-Tribune story again, and said, “I will stick to there are some of them like boarding schools.”
A piece in the San Diego Union-Tribune does liken the facilities to boarding schools, but it also details their prisonlike attributes:
On closer inspection, details about the California-licensed child care facility run by Southwest Key Programs reflect the situation of the children it serves.It’s surrounded by fencing that is backed by privacy netting, and a sign at the gate warns visitors that it’s under video surveillance 24 hours per day. If someone opens the front door of the facility without first swiping a badge, an alarm blares through the hallway, warning of a potential escape.
Fox News later released a statement on the host’s behalf, which read, in part, “Laura Ingraham’s very personal, on-the-ground commitment to the plight of impoverished and abandoned children — specifically in Guatemala — speaks for itself. So too does her strong belief in a commonsense, legal immigration system, which will continue to be a focus of her show.”
Many people were not pleased with Ingraham’s description.
At Laura Ingraham's summer camp, kids play hide and seek with their parents and never find them again. https://t.co/zx1BkxD6RM
— Nick Jack Pappas (@Pappiness) June 19, 2018
Among her chief critics was Parkland, Fla., school shooting survivor David Hogg, who was embroiled in a Twitter feud with Ingraham earlier this year.
In March, Ingraham mocked Hogg’s comments on Twitter about getting rejection letters from colleges. She retweeted a story from a conservative news site that described Hogg as a “Gun Rights Provocateur,” then added, in a tweet: “David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA … totally predictable given acceptance rates.)”
She later apologized, but Hogg went on the offensive, calling the Fox News host a bully whose statements toward him were in line with harsh statements she’d made about others.
Hogg went on Twitter, compiling a list of the top companies that advertise on “The Ingraham Angle” and encouraging his followers to message and boycott them. In a matter of days, Ingraham lost more than a dozen advertisers, including Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Hulu, Jenny Craig, Ruby Tuesday and Miracle-Ear.
On Tuesday, following the summer camp statement, Hogg was again urging people to contact “Ingraham Angle” advertisers.
“If we get these advertisers pulled maybe [Ingraham] will have to become a camp counselor and learn how wrong she is,” Hogg said, before listing some of the show’s sponsors.
So @IngrahamAngle we meet again. Who are you biggest advertisers now?
— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) June 19, 2018
If we get these advertisers pulled maybe @Ingraham will have to become a camp counselor and learn how wrong she is.
— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) June 19, 2018
1. @BeachesResorts & @SandalsResorts
2.@SIRIUSXM
3. @CarfaxReports
4. @AceHardware
5. IAC (Angie’s List, Home Advisor, Match)
6. @Cabelas
7. @JohnDeere
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