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CNN Attack On Ken Cuccinelli Leaves Out His Previous Employer: CNN

Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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CNN’s recent attack on Ken Cuccinelli appears to omit the fact that, until just a few months ago, Cuccinelli was employed by the network.

Cuccinelli, who currently serves in President Donald Trump’s administration as the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), left CNN in May of 2019 to take that position.

CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski took aim at the former Attorney General of Virginia in a Saturday article, saying that Cuccinelli had been a “founding member” of a group that referred to illegal immigrants as “foreign invaders” who shouldered much of the responsibility for “serious infectious diseases, drug running, gang violence, human trafficking, terrorism.”

The article described Cuccinelli’s involvement in the group State Legislators for Legal Immigration (SLLI). Founded in 2007, the group argued that illegal immigration presented a crisis on a scale that could justify the use of the War Powers Act to repel migrant caravans.

Kaczynski noted numerous times that Cuccinelli had referred to illegal immigration as an invasion — even mentioning a 2015 radio interview during which he said Cuccinelli accused then-President Barack Obama of “encouraging” that invasion — but neglected to mention that his association with SLLI predated his employment with CNN.

Cuccinelli has also been accused of “rewriting” the Emma Lazarus poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty to read, “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.” (RELATED: Yet Another Reporter Implies Poem On Statue Of Liberty Should Set Immigration Policy)

Cuccinelli has defended his position and the Trump administration’s move to strengthen public charge laws, arguing that “self-sufficiency has been a tenet of the American dream.”