After visiting an immigrant detention center in Texas yesterday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters that immigrants jailed there had been told to drink water from toilets. Naturally, the White House latched onto the claim, deploying Kellyanne Conway to assure the country that nothing of the sort was taking place.
On Tuesday morning, Conway spoke with Fox & Friends for a friendly chat. During the conversation, Conway pivoted from a line of questioning about Sen. Chuck Schumer’s criticizing President Donald Trump’s photo op with North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un, refocusing the hosts on the claims made by Ocasio-Cortez.
“Chuck Schumer wants to talk about photo-ops?” Conway said. “I saw one yesterday. And it’s called Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez going down to one of these facilities and making this outrageous claim that a woman’s drinking from a toilet, which everybody who has control over that facility, or control for the Border Patrol has said that’s not true, they’ve not heard of this.”
The answer amounted to a straight-up denial, with the clear implication being that Ocasio-Cortez is a liar—which garnered no pushback from the show’s hosts. All in a morning’s work for the Fox morning show.
The comments prompted a response from Ocasio-Cortez just a few hours later, with the New York congresswoman turning the tables on Conway:
Conway has not yet publicly responded, though when she does, I imagine it’ll come after she’s had some White House aide edit a photo of herself next to a random brown child—to be unveiled on Fox News, of course.