CNN’s Abby Phillip Flabbergasted By GOP Commentator Insisting Trump Campaign Immigration Meme Wasn’t Racist

CNN host Abby Phillip was left stunned as Republican commentator Tricia McLaughlin and former Trump aide Bryan Lanza ignited debate on NewsNight in her defense of a “racist” meme posted by the Trump campaign implying immigration under Democratic nominee Kamala Harris would see the US flooded with non-white people.

The image, shared on Tuesday by the account Trump War Room on X, showed a suburb side-by-side with a crowd of Black people and was posted with the caption “Import the third world. Become the third world.”

On NewsNight, a panel consisting of McLaughlin, Lanza, CEO and co-founder of The Seneca Project Tara Setmayer, and LA Times journalist LZ Granderson became chaotic during commentary on the image.

When Phillip raised the meme Lanza and McLaughlin, who worked as communications director for Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, both stepped up to defend it.

PHILLIP: I do want to bring this to bring up this point. You were just talking about the policy. I actually appreciate the policy conversation, but this is what the Trump War Room just tweeted earlier today: ‘Import the third world, become the third world.’ That picture on the left there saying your neighborhood under Trump on the right, your neighborhood under Kamala Harris, and it’s a sea of black and brown faces.

GRANDERSON: I’m sure that’s not racist, right?

MCLAUGHLIN: I think that’s showing chaos.

GRANDERSON: You don’t think that’s racist?

MCLAUGHLIN: I don’t you don’t think that illegal immigration should be about race. If you are entering this country, if you are from China, if you are from Europe, if you are from South America…

GRANDERSON: Do you think the image that you saw is racist?

MCLAUGHLIN: I don’t think that that image is racist.

SETMAYER: They’re showing 40% of illegal immigration comes from people who are on Visa overstays from other countries that are not coming from… If that’s what it’s all about then how come Donald Trump doesn’t focus on that, but he talks about “shithole countries” and people of color and the browning of America, the Great Replacement Theory.

MCLAUGHLIN: We should talk about all of it because on all of it…

PHILLIP: Let’s talk about message discipline, right, and the ball always, obviously, Trump is the candidate, the ball falls in his court. But this is an X social media post from the campaign. Okay? The campaign is backing him up on racist messaging. It’s about skin color that’s what they mean by it.

LANZA: I’m a minority American, I’m a latino. I don’t think Republicans look at skin color. I didn’t feel that in that image. You know, when I saw that image, the first thing I saw was a real contrast that Trump had, you know, safety versus dangerous.

PHILLIP: So, you don’t think that they chose an image… black and brown migrants and then make a point about race…

LANZA: No, listen, I’ve been part of the decision-making in those [kinds of] photos and been part of the decision-making, race never played a role in it. It was what image can help us say what we want to say. When I see that image I see what Trump wants to say. I see that with Trump you’re safe, with Harris-Walz you’re unsafe. And that is the image I think that’s I don’t know what the image looks like.

SETMAYER: But violent crime is down under Biden.

LANZA: Because it’s not been reported guys…

GRANDERSON: The FBI, CIA and police departments all around the nation are saying, keep the numbers down because when Biden says…

PHILLIP: You’re saying crime is not being reported?

LANZA: No, no, I’m saying I’m saying if you look at California, Proposition 47, a significant amount of that crime is no longer being reported because laws were passed to say those crimes don’t need to be reported. So that was crimes that are under $100.

PHILLIP: That’s not just a Californian thing. It’s across the country… almost all major cities.

LANZA: Yeah, sure, but I’m saying but that phenomenon is taking place, which started in California, playing out in all major cities.

GRANDERSON: We’ve the highest imprisoned in that nation and the planet.

LANZA: I think that’s a different conversation we’re having.

GRANDERSON: It’s the same conversation because it’s the impetus behind the law that was put out there because we have too many Americans who are in jail for non-violent crime.

MCLAUGHLIN: But then you have a prosecutor as your nominee who put people behind bars for smoking marijuana, for possession of marijuana, while she was laughing. She smoked marijuana while listening to Bob Marley.

LANZA: I would say this as a Californian, she was very proud of the record that she put people of color in jail for petty marijuana crime?

GRANDERSON: I do not believe she said that.

Watch above on CNN.