Batya Ungar-Sargon Melts Down on CNN, Invokes Anti-Nazi Poem to Bash Due Process: ‘First They Came For …’

CNN host Abby Phillip was forced to intervene as Trump-supporting panelist Batya Ungar-Sargon went off on Thursday night, protesting “due process” for “gangbangers” who were being deported to El Salvador by the administration.

The fiery segment began as co-panelist Scott Jennings asked whether those demanding “due process” for illegal immigrants would likewise defend that right for “another group” who arrived in the U.S. to “try to invade.”

While other panelists were confused by the framing, former DNC spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa interrupted to say she agreed with Jennings that if gang members were “killing and raping women” then “absolutely they should be deported” but maintained that “there should be a process to deport them.”

She continued to accuse Jennings of arguing that all illegal immigrants were a threat, adding that “is not true.”

Jennings protested it in return: “They’re not all violent.”

Hinojosa concluded that “everybody, whether they are 2 years old or whether they are 90 years old, and have been in our country the entire time, deserve a process.”

“There are laws in order and their deportation proceedings to get these people out of our country. The 99-year-old who was here did not invade,” she added.

Ungar-Sargon, introduced by the host, immediately returned fire on Hinojosa: “To me, like, the energy in defense of these gang bangers…”

“I’m not defending them! I just said they should leave!” the Democrat shot back as the panel erupted.

Ungar-Sargon then replied with a bizarre twist on Pastor Martin Niemöller’s 1946 poem about the incremental purging of groups and people in Nazi Germany, supposed to relay how silence was complicity when Adolf Hitler’s attacks on others gave way to the eventual targeting of the writer himself.

Ungar-Sargon’s odd take mocked the liberal defense of due process rights for deportees, who she characterized not as victim groups but as violent criminal types who should be purged: “I feel that poem where it’s like, you know, first they came for the guy who beats his wife. And I said nothing because I don’t beat my wife. And then they came for the guy who said, I love killing Jews. And I said nothing because I don’t love killing Jews. And now they came for the gang bangers and I said nothing.”

Co-panelist and Ringer podcast host Van Lathan cut in: “Can I say something real quick? Do you know why that triggers me? That triggers me because I come from a place where a whole bunch of people, they’re American citizens, but they are thrown away. They’re thrown away because they might have committed crimes, because they got in trouble when they were young.”

“You should be the angriest that they care about the gang members and not those people,” Ungar-Sargon shouted back.

Lathan replied: “What I care about is that there is a system of laws that is supposed to protect the due process of those people, and that has to matter more than what society thinks about whatever they have done.”

“I am angry about that!” Ungar-Sargon railed as Lathan tried to speak. “I am angry that there are Black people in prison who didn’t get due process!”

As Phillip tried to cool the debate down, Ungar-Sargon continued to shout: “I don’t know why the Democrats are not angry about that.”

“So why do you not want that for anybody else?” another panelist quipped.

Ungar-Sargon, still shouting, returned: “Because they’re not citizens. We do not owe them the same thing. It has to mean something to be an American!”

Phillip cut in to set the record straight on legal obligations: “Batya! Hold on a second. I mean, I get the passion, but I really think it’s important to really scrutinize what you just said. The idea that people do not have the right to the processes of the law just because they are not citizens is your opinion. But that is not how the law works.”

Ungar-Sargon began: “The President has the right to -”

The host continued calmly: “You understand that that is not how the law works, that it is not true, that just because your citizen status, citizenship status, does not mean that you do not get the same rights to legal processes as everybody else in this country.”

Watch above via CNN.