CNN Political Commentator Van Jones, who on the first day of Republican convention decried it as a “hate-fest,” praised the Democratic convention’s tone on illegal immigration on Monday. “What I saw last week, whenever you talked about immigration, it was almost a criminalization of that whole community,” Jones stated, “Tonight you're seeing a humanization of that community.” Most of the Anderson Cooper 360 panel agreed with Jones and paid little mind to the humanization of the victims of illegal immigrants.
“The only undocumented people we talk about at the Republican convention were the very few who had committed crimes,” whined Paul Begala, “And they tried to generalize that as demagogue will.” “The Democrats want to personalize them, they want to humanize them,” Begala continued, talking about illegal immigrants, “It’s putting a human face on a real crisis.”
Jeffrey Lord, Trump supporter and NewBusters contributor, was the only dissenting voice. He argued that it was also important to put a human face on the victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants:
At the Republican convention, they had Jamiel Shaw Sr., an African-American man who lost his 17-year-old son, a star student, who was headed for a good college and he wanted to be a sports agent when he grew up. And he has shot to death by an illegal immigrant from Mexico. And Mr. Shaw, needless to say, has a very different opinion about this. He loved his son. He is very angry about this. He feels no one paid any attention to him and Donald Trump is. And I think right there is the difference.
Lord also pointed out that in recent days a Mexican newspaper argued that their country should build a wall on the southern border to keep illegal Guatemalans out. Jones chided that, “It means Donald Trump does not have a monopoly on bad ideas.”
The panel was ready to continue but Host Anderson Cooper cut them off because he wanted them to watch the Funny or Die video about to be played on DNC’s big screen.