CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin: Cuccinelli Twisting Statue of Liberty Poem to Attack Migrants is ‘Un-American’

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin accused acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli of spewing “un-American” comments in response to the Trump official twisting the words of a pro-immigrant poem etched into the Statue of Liberty to advocate against migrants fleeing poverty.

During an NPR interview on Tuesday, Cuccinelli changed the words that rests beneath Lady Liberty to slam immigrants: “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.”

After CNN host Wolf Blitzer asked Toobin to comment on Cuccinelli’s remarks, the analyst said that while “it is hard to define un-American,” Cuccinelli’s statement “was un-American.”

“As the descendant of a hundred years ago, people who came to this country looking for opportunity and found it — that is why people have come here, they don’t want to be public charges,” Toobin continued. “But they come here and they work hard and a lot of them work in terrible jobs for low pay and sometimes they need food stamps to eat — to feed their families.”

“That is who — that is who is going to be penalized. Not the people who hire the illegal immigrants, who are — they always get away under the Trump Administration,” he added. “But the people who are working hard and trying to support they’re families, they’re the ones who are punished by this and it is just a disgrace that that is the prevailing ethos of our administration.”

The actual words etched into the statue on Liberty Island in New York states: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore…”

Watch above, via CNN.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet Newsletter
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!