President Donald Trump's comments during a Florida rally referring to the influx of migrants as an "invasion" show that there is a "painful" moral crisis in the United States, House Assistant Whip Veronica Escobar, who is introducing legislation to protect people seeking asylum, said Thursday.
"When I saw it last night, it made me very, very sad, very sad for our country, that we are at such a moral rock bottom and that we have a president who has created an addiction to hate, an addiction to bigotry," the Texas Democrat told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
She said her asylum legislation is an attempt to defund a program that sends asylum seekers back to Mexico to await hearings and due process.
"We're seeing that many of them are not returning because they can't," said Escobar. "They are growing more and more desperate and they're being put in danger so we're trying to defund that program altogether."
Escobar, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, also discussed the group's vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt after he did not appear for a hearing last week.
"The attorney general gave us no choice," said Escobar. "Chairman (Jerry) Nadler has tried for over two months to get access to materials and information that rightfully belongs in the hands of Congress. We are here to do the people's work. They have stalled, stonewalled, obstructed."
Russia attacked the 2016 election, she added, and are "still at it today," and everyone should be working to learn the full truth to keep that from happening again.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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