A MAGA pundit got herself brutally fact-checked, twice, while attempting to defend Donald Trump’s bogus claims about Joe Biden’s immigration policies.
Conservative journalist Lydia Moynihan took issue with her fellow panelist, political strategist Ana Navarro, saying on CNN late Wednesday that Trump had lied about the number of murderers his Democratic predecessor had “allowed” into the country.
When Navarro noted Trump had cited “made up” numbers during his State of the Union address, Moynihan interrupted to yell: “We don’t know!”
“We do know! We do know! We do know because I have put out numbers,” Navarro raged. “We actually do know that that’s not true. That is a lie!”
The president told lawmakers during his speech Tuesday that “Biden and his corrupt partners in Congress and beyond” had allowed “11,888” murderers to enter the United States.
That is false. His comments referred to a letter, sent in September 2024 by acting ICE director Patrick Lechleitner to GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales, asserting that 13,099 non-citizens convicted of murder had been present in the country, but not in ICE custody, as of July 2024.
Trump later used that letter at a rally to claim his opponent, Kamala Harris, had “let in 13,099 convicted murderers; some of them had murdered 10 people, some murdered seven, one murdered six.” His running mate JD Vance, now vice president, similarly claimed that “they’re in this country because Kamala Harris let them in this country.”
The data actually pertained to convictions for non-citizens who had entered the country over the previous forty years. Biden and Harris had been in power for just four of them, and Trump himself, another four. The overwhelming majority of individuals contained in the data were also not in ICE custody at the time because they were, in fact, in jail, serving lengthy sentences after being duly convicted for their crimes.
Trump further claimed earlier this week that Biden allowed “millions and millions from prisons, from mental institutions” to “pour” into the country. He has previously accused former Venezuelan tyrant Nicolas Maduro, who now faces narcoterrorism charges in a New York federal court following Trump’s lightning invasion of the country earlier in January, of deliberately sending those people to the United States.
Navarro blasted Trump for that too. “He lied over twenty times,” she said of his Tuesday address. “He said Maduro opened up the prisons and the insane asylums. There is no evidence, zero, that Maduro did that.”
“You’re literally defending Maduro!” a flustered Moynihan interjected. Navarro was having none of it. “I am telling you, the guy you say is ‘unifying’ is a pathological liar,” she replied.
Host Abby Phillips was also quick to shoot Moynihan down. “I don’t think it’s ‘defending’ Maduro to point out what Trump said about Maduro is not true,” she scoffed. “OK? That’s not a defense of Maduro. That’s just a defense of… facts.”
