Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said Thursday on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” that former President Donald Trump’s “extremely xenophobic and racist immigration policies” played a role in the current Afghanistan withdrawal chaos.
Anchor Joy Reid said, “We used to have an annual ceiling of 231,000 people under Ronald Reagan. No moderate figure there. George W. Bush 70,000. Under President Obama, it was 85,000. Under Trump 15,000. We have had former members of the administration come forward and talk about Stephen Miller, eventual essentially waging rhetorical war against the idea of Afghans coming here. We have seen people on another network call them invaders…So there is another side of this. There is another side that doesn’t want any of them here. So do you think that the politics around bringing more people in are going to be challenged by that xenophobic attitude we are seeing play out?”
Ocasio-Cortez said, “It is no secret that the Trump administration carried out extremely xenophobic and racist immigration policies. When we look at the turmoil of what is happening now, one of the questions we have to ask as well — Afghanistan is a responsibility and that falls upon the shoulders of virtually every president since George W. Bush. One of the things we see, what was the Trump administration doing when they were not pre-evacuating out under the SIV program, these Afghan interpreters and nationals and allies? It is because of Stephen Miller and his rhetoric and the xenophobia of the Trump administration that there were many thousands of Afghans we could have worked on evacuating much earlier than even this year.”
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