CNN’s Dana Bash Calls BS on Trump Deportation Forces ‘Gaslighting’ Amid Massive Public Outrage

CNN anchor Dana Bash called BS on President Donald Trump’s administration over “gaslighting” attempts to seize the “narrative” amid massive outrage over deportation operations.

Outrage over ICE operations has been building since the killing of Renee Good, and escalated Thursday with the apprehension of a five-year-old boy amid conflicting reports on the incident. The White House also posted an altered photo of an anti-ICE protester’s arrest.

On Friday’s edition of CNN’s Inside Politics, Bash ticked through several examples of the White House trying to reshape the narrative amid the outrage. She referred to their efforts as “gaslighting.”

Bash and CNN White House correspondent Kristen Holmes contrasted the administration’s position with the contradictory reality:

DANA BASH: You heard the president say that it is tragic that the woman was killed. He in the next breath also said that he understood that her father was a Trump supporter.

So I mean, it’s sort of a yeah, but but I do I do want to play one thing because JD Vance went to Minneapolis yesterday and he went with the intent, at least we were told, of trying to do that softer.

But there were some differences between what he… Said yesterday and what he said when he came out to the press briefing room on January 7th. Here’s one prime example.

VP JD VANCE: You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law-enforcement action, that’s a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity. No, I didn’t say, and I don’t think any other official within the Trump administration said that officers who engage in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity. That’s absurd.

DANA BASH: And then, Kristen, just another example, the White House put on Twitter, Kristi Noem put a tweet of an image out there, which we’re gonna show you.

And then the WhiteHouse handle, if we can put it up, showed an altered post of that same image of the woman crying, which was not actually what happened.

So these are some examples of how they’re trying to seize back the narrative, but doing so with a little bit of gaslighting.

KRISTEN HOLMES: They’ve lost the plot. And they think that the Americans have lost the plot.

And so what you see when you see President Trump out there doing his own briefing, which, by the way, he was not scheduled to do, is because President Trump thinks that he’s the one who can actually deliver the message when it comes to immigration.

Sure, we are hearing some kind of softening of rhetoric going back on what they said. That is not changing the way that this administration is looking at ICE.

They are still fully backing ICE.

It is also not changing they are looking at immigration. Look at what President Trump did. Yes, he had a softer language when it came to the woman who was shot multiple times, causing outcry across the country.

But when it came to immigration, he held up those mug shots. He talked about what they were doing. He believes that his message isn’t getting across.

He also believes he won on immigration. He believes he is the strongest messenger and that people, if they actually understand what ICE is doing, will come back around to him.

But I do want to be very clear about something. They don’t want these pictures out there. They don’t want a picture of a five-year-old. They don’t want somebody getting shot in the head.

They don’t want to change what they’re doing, but they don’t want that to be the narrative.

They want the narrative to be look at what we’re doing for immigration.

DANA BASH: Right. But sorry, what’s happening is what we are capturing.

Watch above via CNN’s Inside Politics.

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