MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow ‘Struggling’ With What To Call Trump Prisons — ‘Concentration Camps’ Or ‘Internment Camps’
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said she’s “struggling” with what to call President Donald Trump’s detention facilities, arguing that “concentration camps” and “internment camps” are accurate from a “technical” standpoint.
One emblem of Trump administration’s hardline immigration crackdown has been the boundary-pushing detention methods that have included shipping migrants to a notorious Salvadoran prison and the migrant detention center at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Florida — better known among MAGA fans and the media as “Alligator Alcatraz.”
On Monday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, Maddow brought up her conundrum when she asked Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) to explain his use of the term “internment camps”:
MADDOW: In terms of this facility, you use the term internment camp. And I saw your colleague, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, use that same phrase. Obviously, that’s very evocative language with history in this country that is difficult for a lot of people. Talk about why you think that term is appropriate. I’ve been struggling with that myself just as a broadcaster in terms of how to talk about these things. I mean, in technical terms, if — if you’ve got a facility that’s holding people indefinitely and there’s no legal process to get in there and there’s no legal process to get out, that is traditionally called a concentration camp or an internment camp. And I wonder about your specificity — specificity in — in using that language.
FROST: Well, I sure as hell am not going to use what they’re calling it. You know, what they’re calling it is to make light of the situation. What they’re calling it is to make it a giggle or something you can sell merch on. And so I encourage people, don’t call it what they’re calling it, you know? And everyone’s using different language, different names. You know, I — I’m going with internment or even prison detention center because this — and this isn’t even a detention center, right? The thing people have to realize too is when an immigrant is being detained, they’re being detained because they’re going through the legal process of deportation.
They are not — have not been convicted of a crime. They’re not serving a sentence for a crime. And so they should not be treated in this way. And to be honest, even if you’re treated as a — even if you’ve been convicted of a crime in this country, you don’t — you shouldn’t be treated this way as well. The conditions were horrible. And it’s — it’s nothing less than what I called it. And I’d like to be very clear about things, because we have too much B.S. in this world and in this politics where people want to sanitize stuff. We can’t sanitize what’s going on in the Everglades because it’s going on around the country.
Watch above via MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show.
