Vice President Mike Pence criticized CNN on Friday night for not telling the “whole story” in its coverage of his visit to a border migrant detention facility.
Pence’s trip to the McAllen, Texas facility with Republican lawmakers and reporters included a tour and a roundtable discussion with agents, Fox News reported. He also used a translator to ask migrant children how they were being treated.
However, when “Anderson Cooper 360” aired CNN senior White House correspondent Pamela Brown’s interview with the vice president, the network featured split-screen footage of a temporary facility built for adult male migrants only and nothing of the family facility or Pence visiting children.
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“It’s a facility you saw today represents the level and the standard of care that we are working to bring to all those caught up in this crisis,” Pence told Brown, referring to the family facility. “Remember, it was just a few short weeks ago that Congress finally acknowledged the crisis and gave us an additional $4.6 billion in humanitarian aid.”
Pence blasted CNN in tweets following the interview for its “dishonest” coverage in showing only the one facility and failing to “broadcast the full story.” (RELATED: What Will It Take For Democrats To Finally Acknowledge The Border Crisis?)
CNN is so dishonest. Today we took reporters to a detention facility on the border for families and children and all told us they were being treated well. The crisis at our southern border is not a “manufactured crisis,” it is real and is overwhelming our system. To show this, we also visited an overcrowded facility for adult men, many of whom have been arrested multiple times. These men were in a temporary holding area because Democrats in Congress have refused to fund additional bed space. Rather than broadcast the full story, showing the compassionate care the American people are providing to vulnerable families, tonight CNN only played video of men in the temporary facility and didn’t play any footage of the family facility at all, ignoring the excellent care being provided to families and children. Our great @CBP agents deserve better and the American people deserve the whole story from CNN!
CNN is so dishonest. Today we took reporters to a detention facility on the border for families and children and all told us they were being treated well.
— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) July 13, 2019
The crisis at our southern border is not a “manufactured crisis”, it is real and is overwhelming our system. To show this, we also visited an overcrowded facility for adult men, many of whom have been arrested multiple times.
— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) July 13, 2019
These men were in a temporary holding area because Democrats in Congress have refused to fund additional bed space.
— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) July 13, 2019
Rather than broadcast the full story, showing the compassionate care the American people are providing to vulnerable families, tonight CNN only played video of men in the temporary facility and didn’t play any footage of the family facility at all…
— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) July 13, 2019
ignoring the excellent care being provided to families and children. Our great @CBP agents deserve better and the American people deserve the whole story from CNN! pic.twitter.com/hsKsU6umhW
— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) July 13, 2019
The network did compare the two facilities in a piece published Saturday morning:
In Donna, Pence saw oversized, air-conditioned facilities, with children and their parents lying on cots, watching animated movies and eating snacks.
In McAllen, it was a much different scene: Pence toured a swelteringly hot room called a sally port with hundreds of men, a strong smell of sweat and overcrowding so extreme there was no room for cots, the migrants left to sleep on concrete beneath mylar blankets.
“The Vice President’s office specifically instructed CBP to not clean up or sanitize the facility beyond what is routine so the American people could see how serious the crisis at our border is (overcrowding, lack of resources, beds),” an administration official said in an email, noting that there were Secret Service concerns over Pence entering the sally port, but the Vice President’s office pushed for press access.
