Ann Coulter has gone full Alex Jones on the immigrant families being separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.
During a Sunday night Fox News panel show that also included Donald Trump Jr.’s new girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle and former Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Coulter declared that any kids seen “weeping and crying” on TV are nothing more than “child actors.”
“These child actors weeping and crying on all the other networks 24/7 right now—do not fall for it, Mr. President,” Coulter warned Trump. “I get very nervous about the president getting his news from TV.”
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As host Steve Hilton tried fecklessly to correct her smear against innocent children, Coulter plowed on, claiming that she was using as her source an article from The New Yorker—“not a conservative publication”—that supposedly described how “these kids are being coached, they’re given scripts to read by liberals.” She added, “Don’t fall for the actor children.”
The New Yorker article in question does not seem to exist, though some have speculated that Coulter may have been referring to a New York Times article from May, which reported that Trump administration officials claim migrant children have been “coached on what to say to make fraudulent claims for asylum.”
Instead of attempting to fact-check Coulter’s outlandish assertion, Hilton simply said, “Thank you for getting that off your chest” and moved right along.
UPDATE: The author of The New Yorker story that Coulter was apparently referencing on Fox spoke out against her reading of it on Monday afternoon. The article, published in 2011, documents how America’s immigration system encourages asylum seekers to exaggerate the risk they face in their home countries.
