Tucker Carlson’s reaction to his guest’s factual assertions about sanctuary cities is a clear example why his audience remains in their sealed echo chamber which prevents them from holding their elected officials accountable.
Tucker Carlson caught off-guard with facts
Tucker Carlson thought his segment would be used to put a black eye on sanctuary cities. Instead, he opened the door to an inconvenient truth.
It is important that Progressive who appear on Conservative TV, radio, or elsewhere are always ready with factual counterpoints to catch lying industrial complex off-guard. Latino Victory Project‘s Cristóbal Alex did just that with the following exchange with Tucker Carlson.
“So, the head of the New York City Council, Melissa Mark-Viverito, said that enforcing our immigration laws — said this at the conference — American immigration laws, was tantamount to ethnic cleansing,” Tucker Carlson said. “Do you agree with that?”
Notice that Alex started on a positive note, thanking Carlson for having his on the program. He then immediately started taking over the term sanctuary with a positive connotation as he pointed out an inconvenient fact about sanctuary cities.
“I’m grateful to be here. I’m grateful that the speaker invited us to this amazing conference, which is the first of its kind in the country,” Alex said. “The idea behind the conference was to bring together local officials from around the country to develop policies that will strengthen sanctuary city policies and protect immigrants. The speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, was a champion for progressive values, a champion for immigrants, and the point that she was trying to make is that sanctuary cities are actually much safer. And what Jeff Sessions, and what this Department of Justice are trying to do is pass draconian laws that will make it much harder and unsafe for our cities in the United States.”
By pointing out the fact that Carlson was unprepared for and unwilling to accept, it took Carlson off message and into a debate who could not win as the facts were not on his side.
“I’ve heard this before, and, just to be clear, there’s no social science to support your position on that,” Carlson said. “There are no actual studies that show a sanctuary city is safer. Sorry.”
Alex did not let that comment go unchallenged.
“I disagree with you, Tucker,” Alex responded.
Tucker tried to have the last word.
“There’s no disagreement — there haven’t been studies done on that that show it,” Tucker said.
Alex did not cower as he responded. More importantly, in addition to pointing out the increased safety of these cities, he included some economic realities.
“Let me just correct you there,” Alex said. “I can talk about it right now. The most comprehensive study to date is the University of California study done by Tom Wong. It basically looked at sanctuary cities across the country, and it said that there are 35.5 fewer crimes committed per 10,000 in sanctuary cities than non-sanctuary cities. It also said it’s even better in smaller municipalities. And, importantly, sanctuary cities have stronger economies, lower poverty rates, lower uninsured rates –”
Tucker had no comeback, so he had to resort to the connection, causation, and speculation argument. Of course, Republicans usually depend on much less as corroboration of their ill-advised policies.
I don’t want to waste either one of our time here. That’s not causation,” said Tucker Carlson. “There’s no established connection between those two. It’s merely speculative –”
“I don’t know that it is,” Alex responded.
Kudos to Cristóbal Alex. Progressives, take notes.