A pair of Fox News co-hosts got into a heated argument Thursday after one claimed that nobody had suggested the terrorist in the New Orleans attack was an illegal immigrant.
Jessica Tarlov, a Democratic Party political strategist, got into the spat with Jeanine Pirro on The Five about the New Year’s Day attack, which saw 14 people killed and dozens more injured. Authorities say a 42-year-old U.S. Army veteran from Texas was to blame.
Tarlov told Pirro: “When you say, ‘I’m embarrassed watching Joe Biden,’ I’m not embarrassed seeing someone stand up there and saying, ‘Let’s wait for some of the facts here,’ because Donald Trump went out there and he said…”
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She was quickly interrupted by Pirro, who said “No, [Biden] assured Americans [that] all was well.”
Tarlov then went on, “No, listen to all of the comments that he made and the statements which said we need to make sure we have the right facts, and the right facts were that the guy in New Orleans was an American. He wasn’t an illegal.”
Pirro then protested, “No one’s saying he wasn’t,” to which Tarlov snapped back: “That’s not true! There have been Republicans who have been on TV today talking about how this was an open border problem.”
Several prominent GOP figures were quick to link the attack to border security. President-elect Donald Trump responded to the incident with a Truth Social post lamenting “criminals coming in” to the U.S.
House Speaker Mike Johnson also referred to the “wide open border” while discussing the attack in his own Fox News interview this week, while Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL), used his time on the network Thursday to say the U.S. should “close our border” to prevent attacks in the future.
Several takes connecting the tragedy to illegal immigration cited Fox News’ reporting on the incident, which initially claimed the attack had been carried out by a suspect who’d crossed into the country from Mexico. The network later corrected its coverage.
