A conservative commentator was hit with a quick fact check on CNN after excusing President Donald Trump’s interference in the Texas redistricting mess.
Border Patrol agents poured into downtown Los Angeles as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats outlined plans to redraw California’s congressional map in response to a Republican push to do the same in Texas to their own advantage, and conservative journalist Rob Bluey told “CNN This Morning” that the situations in the two states were completely different.
“It’s important also to point out that we’re talking about two different sets of facts,” Bluey said. “The whole situation in Texas stemmed from a lawsuit and a decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.”
Fellow panelist Sabrina Singh, a former deputy Pentagon press secretary under Joe Biden, quickly pushed back.
“That’s still caught up in the courts,” she said. “What Gov. [Greg] Abbott is taking a Sharpie pen and just redoing the maps. That’s not from the lawsuit that’s been brought.”
Bluey argued the GOP governor’s actions were justified by changes to the state’s population since the last census was conducted five years ago.
“Texas has also had 2 million new residents move into the state since the last census,” he said. “The census made errors. Texas was cheated out of a seat and an electoral vote and Florida was cheated out of two because the census made errors. There were a number of problems that have happened over the last couple of years that could lead people to that conclusion that [host Audie Cornish] just made, that their vote is in some ways not [being counted].”
Cornish expressed skepticism, asking whether states should simply call for a new census and redraw their congressional maps if they didn’t like the results of the head count conducted under constitutional authority, and Bluey eagerly took the bait.
“I think states should do their own census,” Bluey said. “Maybe each state and the federal government can do this in collaboration. By the way, in the 1970s they amended the law and they said that you could do a mid-decade census, so it’s not that Donald Trump’s doing anything unusual, it’s just that the federal government hasn’t done it before.”
Singh poured cold water on Bluey’s argument, saying the president’s insistence on changing a state’s congressional map to favor his own party was indeed unusual.
“Each state has their own different constitution, but the lawsuit that you’re referring to is not why Gov. Abbott decided to draw the map, redraw the maps,” Singh said. “He decided to do that because Donald Trump put pressure on him. The lawsuit is still in the Texas courts and has not risen to the state level to redraw the map.”
Raw Story: CNN right-winger gets shut down as he uses ‘2 different sets of facts’ to defend Trump
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