WATCH: Chris Cuomo Compares Whipping Border Images to Slavery Era — Then Defends Agents as ‘Doing Their Jobs’

CNN host Chris Cuomo delivered a bizarre “both-sides” rant in which he compared images of Border Patrol agents with the slavery era — then defended the agents as “doing their job” by charging Haitian asylum-seekers on horseback and using reins as whips to intimidate them.

On Monday night’s edition of Cuomo Primetime, the host began a five-minute commentary by showing viewers one of many images taken at the U.S.-Mexico border showing Border Patrol agents on horseback intimidating asylum seekers.  This is the specific image Cuomo showed:

PAUL RATJE/AFP via Getty Images

The White House has called the images and videos “horrific,” and vowed to investigate, and Cuomo seemed to agree when he told his viewers “Yes, as an image, to me, it does smack of a bygone era, of slavery, aided by reports of people being beaten, whether with a riding crop, or the reins, most likely…”

Cuomo then played video of Jen Psaki telling reporters that “I don’t think anyone seeing that footage would think it was acceptable or appropriate,” and added his own comment: “Well, somebody did, right? Because that’s how they decided to deal with the situation. So, the question becomes, get to the bottom of it. Find out who said it was OK? Why was it OK? Tell us.”

So far, it was a pretty clear denunciation of a sickening and obvious abuse of people desperately seeking safety.

But then came a bizarre turn, as Cuomo tried to nuance his audience into easing up on the Border Patrol, saying “The agents, trying to turn them around, and send them back, across the border, look, that is their job. But it’s what is being done to allow this country to process the need. We can’t do better than horseback?”

He then urged viewers to look at the totality of the circumstances, including what he called the “bad position” that those horsemen have been put in:

You see the video. But you need to see the confluence, all right? Everything going on at once, all captured in this one image, OK, see the horse, their use is common and necessary along this part of the border.

The horse is there because a wall was never going to be enough. Sounded simple because it was simplistic. We were never a wall away.

We’ve spent billions on technology drones, helicopters, sensors, blimps, cameras, even yes, fencing. But given the terrain, the work of patrolling often has to be done on horseback.

Look at the agent’s face. What do you see?

Frustration. Anger. They’ve been put in a bad position. They are overwhelmed. The system is overwhelmed.

A few moments later, after ranting about the deficiencies in our immigration and asylum systems — no argument here on any of that — Cuomo made the jaw-dropping claim that “Nobody wants to make a change!”

Nobody wants to do the hard work.

They just want to pander to “Don’t you care about these people? Look how they’re being treated?” And the other side says, “Do you really want these people coming, to take your jobs, and kill your women?” And we’re stuck there.

And we’re stuck there, because nobody wants to make a change.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with trying to explain “both sides” of an issue, but this is an example of how that impulse has turned pathological.

That impulse led Cuomo to defend actions that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas described as horrifying and completely “unacceptable.”

And it led him to falsely claim that neither “side” wants to “make a change” or “do the hard work,” when it has been one side — Republicans — who have blocked progress on immigration for over a decade, and continue to do so. And “both sides” do, in fact, want to “make a change” — it’s just that one side wants to stop demonizing migrants and treat them humanely. while the other wants to demonize them more and treat them even less humanely.

Watch above via CNN.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.