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On Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, Seth Barron, an editor for the conservative City Journal, stoked xenophobic claims and trafficked in innuendo about Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Congressional district, smearing it as filthy and “one of the least American districts in the country.”

Barron was ostensibly on the show to discuss the supposed hypocrisy of AOC’s support for cleaner environment and a Green New Deal. This claim was based on a “investigation” Carlson said he did, which involved sending a camera crew to her NY-14 district in Queens and the Bronx and taking video of litter.

“Seth Barron, we are connoisseurs of irony, but if you claim to care about the environment,” Carlson said, before pivoting to commonly-used right-wing tactic of absurdly exaggerating the policy implications of a Green New Deal. “You think that the little piece of America you are responsible for that you represent and Congress will be clean, but hers isn’t. Why?”

Carlson’s guest responded by launching a direct, xenophobic broadside against her constituents.

“Part of the reason is because her district is actually one of the least American districts in the country,” Barron claimed. “By that, I don’t mean it’s not part of America, but it is occupied by relatively few American citizens. It is a very high percentage of her district is, in fact, illegal aliens.”

In fact, Barron

does not know nor did he try to provide an exact number or percentage of people in AOC’s district who are non-citizens or “illegal aliens.” Instead, he appeared to be basing his nativist dog-whistle of “relatively few American citizens” on a  a City Journal piece attacking the Congresswoman this past January. In that op-ed, the author noted that 47% of the people in NY-14 are foreign-born, according to the latest US census update. But it is completely false for Barron to imply foreign-born immigrants are also undocumented or are not US citizens. Notably, the Trump administration abandoned its attempts to add a citizenship question to the census this past summer, after losing a high-profile Supreme Court fight.

“So they wind up producing a lot of garbage,” Barron said, vaguely referring to the district’s immigrants. “Hence, you wind up with a lot of garbage on the street, illegal food vendors pouring pig grease into the gutters. I mean, I worked out there, it can be a little gross.”

“So leaving aside the question of immigration status, and as you well know, I think it’s a really important question,” Carlson followed up, dodging around Barron’s missing facts before insinuating AOC should be out personalty patrolling for litter before she should be able to propose environmental legislation. “But it’s not that hard to pick up garbage

off of the street of your own congressional district. How can we take seriously anything she says about the environment when this — she should be ashamed of this.”

Watch the video above, via Fox News.

Tags: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, immigrants, Queens, Seth Barron, Tucker Carlson, Xenophobia