‘I Don’t Think That’s Accurate, Sir’: CNN Anchor Spars With GOP Rep On Border Action For Nearly Nine Minutes

A segment about the government spending bill in the House turned into a fiery argument on cable news Thursday.

CNN anchor Boris Sanchez welcomed Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) on to discuss Republican opposition to the bill that needed to pass in order to fund the government, and the conversation got heated when the subject of the border — and the scuttled border bill — came up.

As Barr explained why he and other Republicans in the House were not satisfied with what was in the bipartisan bill, Sanchez tried to compare the border-related parts of the latest spending bill to what was in the bipartisan Senate bill that former President Donald Trump had killed:

Sanchez: Why support this bill when that bill went so much further and did so many things that Republicans have been asking for for a long time?

Barr: Valid and legitimate question, Boris, but what you fail to mention in that list of very positive reforms and including the Ukraine assistance that I support, what it didn’t, what it what it also included was codifying, the illegal crossings. It surged $7 billion, that so-called bipartisan border bill or immigration reform bill also provided $7 billion to sanctuary jurisdictions. That would be a huge additional magnet for illegal migration. That’s not what we need right now. So, yeah, there were some good features to [Sen. James Lankford’s (R-OK)] efforts, there were.

Sanchez: The bill didn’t codify allowing illegal crossings. It set a threshold of undocumented crossings that would have allowed the executive to say, shut down the border right now. That’s very different than saying we’re going to allow this many people through.

Barr: No, no, Boris —

Sanchez: That’s a different interpretation of what it did. And I’m not, I’m citing Sen. Lankford’s own words, who described this as the most conservative immigration package put forward in a generation.

Barr: Look, James is a friend and he’s a good man, and he he is well-intentioned in what he tried to do, but his hands were tied because he was negotiating with open border — people who support amnesty. The problem we have in that bill —

Sanchez: But the White House didn’t even get anything —

Barr: — was that it, it put in federal law, Boris, it put in federal law an amount of illegal crossings that simply does not exist in current law.

Sanchez: That’s not exactly what it did, Congressman. But the idea, the idea that he was negotiating, the idea that he wanted to to negotiate with people that were asking for amnesty, that bill didn’t contain anything related to amnesty. Democrats essentially conceded, and they gave Republicans what they wanted without a pathway to citizenship.

Barr: Boris, it had $7 billion for amnesty jurisdictions. You’re just wrong. That’s not true. That that bill would be a magnet for more illegal immigration. And look —

Sanchez: I don’t think that’s accurate, sir.

The argument didn’t stop as Sanchez continued to fact-check Barr on his talking points:

Barr: What we need is H.R. 2. What we need, Boris, is border security. We need to reinstitute the successful policies of the Trump administration. We need to finish the border wall. We need to remain in Mexico. We need the migrant protection protocols. We need to end this disastrous catch and release that resulted in the murder of Laken Riley and others —

Sanchez: That bill would have done that, sir! That bill would have ended the parole program.

Barr: The idea… The American people are sick and tired of this administration’s dangerous policy that has resulted in 340 individuals on the terror watch list apprehended at the southern border under his watch. And how many got-aways? We don’t even know. 1.8 million got-aways that the Border Patrol has identified. That doesn’t even count the number of individuals who they haven’t even detected. Americans are dying of fentanyl overdoses. The cartels are exploiting the southern border. The Chinese Communist Party is working with the cartels to exploit this. Kentuckians are dying at record levels because of fentanyl coming across our southern border. This is a crisis that every American, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, it’s totally unacceptable what is happening at the southern border. It’s a homeland security, national security crisis. It’s a crime crisis. And you know what? It could be fixed overnight if this president actually wanted to secure the border. And he clearly does not.

Sanchez: I think any executive action that he might take to to shut down the border, or to take steps that Donald Trump took, would be blocked by federal courts, as the steps that Donald Trump took actually were blocked by federal courts. It’s very hard to say that all of the issues caused by immigration are just on [President] Joe Biden when they’ve been happening for a generation, sir.

Barr: Wait a minute, wait a minute! Why is it, though, if that’s true, if that’s true, if the executive actions don’t make any difference and the courts really intervene, why is it that illegal crossings are so much higher today under Joe Biden than they were under President Trump? Why is it that individuals on the terror watch list are far higher today, crossing the border than they were under President Trump? It’s because President Trump shut down the border–

Sanchez: I’m not disagreeing with you on the question of whether the executive orders have been effective. It’s clear that they haven’t. The numbers are trending in that direction. But some of the more extreme executive orders that Republicans have demanded that the White House take, just like with President Trump, they would have gotten blocked by federal courts. Further, to just blanketly say–

Barr: No, that’s not true.

Sanchez: Okay.

Watch the video above via CNN.