It's Hard to Pick Which of These Fox News Chats With Trump Officials Is Worse

Many members of the Trump administration and many Fox News hosts could be reasonably described as aspiring fascists. But even for them, Tuesday night was a doozy.

First was Lou Dobbs, Fox Business Channel’s resident jowl shaker, who enthusiastically boosted former Trump voter suppression czar Kris Kobach’s proposal to put legal asylum seekers entering the United States into “processing towns.”

Here’s Kobach’s plan (emphasis mine):

Create processing towns that are confined, and so when someone comes in and falsely claims asylum, we don’t release them for six months onto the streets of the United States. We process them right there, in that camp, where they have the three square meals, they’re living in a nice mobile home, and then as soon as they’re done, as soon as the claim is rejected, they’re on the next plane back home. And then the people back home suddenly realize ‘Hey he just left here two weeks ago, and yet he’s back, maybe going in these caravans isn’t such a great deal anymore.’ So let’s process the claims right there at the border and not release these people into the United States where they just disappear.

Ah yes, a “camp” where people are concentrated (or interned) as they’re being “processed.” Neat. Oh, and did you know that Kobach is reportedly in the running to spearhead all of Trump’s immigration policies in the future?

Dobbs later chimed in that that this would “bring all of that unused government property to use, effectively and at very little cost, if not no cost, in fact, to the Department of Homeland Security.”

Meanwhile, back on the Fox News mothership, white supremacist icon Tucker Carlson was busy chatting with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen herself. And by “chatting” I mean spouting the racist talking point that Democrats are stymying Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda because they have a “vested interest in changing the population.”

“You probably have fresher knowledge than we do out here, but it looks like Congress is not going to act because one party has a vested interest in changing the population and the other party is, in effect, controlled by people who want illegal immigration,” Carlson said. “So, would there be a downside for the president to act unilaterally on that question or, for example, birthright citizen? Would you be willing to draft an executive order eliminating birthright citizenship?”

Hey, he’s just askin’ questions here, folks! And, yeah, OK, that question does happen to sound an awwwwful lot like the “you will not replace us” refrain chanted by neo-Nazis during their Charlottesville rally in 2017.

Nielsen, for her part, nodded along and basically agreed (emphasis mine):

I think that the president’s been clear. All of that is on the table, including to close down border. We have to stop this flow into our communities, we have to stop the drugs, we have to stop the trafficking and smuggling and gangs. He’s very serious about it. So yes, I think that everything is on the table.

I would say in my very best #Resistance Twitter voice that “this is not normal!” but it kind of is by now.