Meghan McCain, who is well known for promoting a more conservative worldview on The View, brought confrontational energy to a recent interview with Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
During the interview, McCain attempted to call Psaki out on hypocrisy from within the Biden administration, questioning how re-opening a migrant housing facility for children was all that different from Trump's family separation policy.
Psaki kept her cool, however, and explained to McCain:
"We are not ripping children from the arms of their parents. That is horrible and something we saw in the last administration, but we're seeing kids are fleeing prosecution."
"They're fleeing really difficult circumstances in their home country and they're coming to the border and we have to figure out how to treat them humanely and keep them safe."
"And in a time of covid, that means we needed to open an additional facility so we had to have educational services, so we could have legal services and medical and health services and have those kids there treated humanely until we can find proper homes, family placements for these kids."
"This is incredibly difficult. it's heart-wrenching and it's a really difficult decision and it's the best decision we could make to keep these kids safe until we can get them to the right places and the right homes."
The Biden administration has discontinued the Trump-era policy of separating families but also needed a place for unaccompanied minors who cross the U.S. border.
And while the number of immigrant children whose families couldn't be located due to the Trump administration's separation policy has been lowered from 611 to 506 since Biden took office, there is still a question of where the remaining children will live in the meantime.
McCain, however, continued questioning Psaki:
"I just want to know are you or are you not detaining children in a different facility?"
Psaki once again calmly laid out the scenario for McCain:
"We can't send them directly to families that haven't been vetted. We've seen issues with that in the past. We can't have them all in the former HHS facility because of COVID, and we need to make sure there are safety protocols so they're not in beds next to each other."
The pandemic also created many obstacles for the Biden administration's immigration policies.
Psaki commented:
"This is a facility -- and we had to open a new one to make sure we have the safety protocols in order to address the COVID needs and the health and safety needs because we can't have as many kids in the former HHS facility."
"That's exactly what we did, but our objective is to get these kids into safe homes with their families as quickly as possible, and we are absolutely not doing what the former president did, and what frankly the current president and the current vice president objected to, which is ripping kids from the arms of their parents."
"That is not the policy of this administration and not something we would do."
Twitter loved the way Psaki was able to keep her cool and address McCain's questions with real facts.
While the Biden administration must find a way to cope with the unaccompanied children that arrive in the United States, the Trump administration went out of its way to separate families.
NBC News reported:
"[Stephen] Miller saw the separation of families not as an unfortunate byproduct but as a tool to deter more immigration."
One thing is certain—Jen Psaki is able to handle a "gotcha" question a little better than her predecessors could.
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@aubrey_huff
reply to San Francisco Chronicle/Facebook by Aubrey Huff
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