Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) on Tuesday suggested that illegal immigrants are like animals that encroach on his property.
During an interview on MSNBC, host Katy Tur asked Kinzinger if politicians were having trouble ending the government shutdown because the rhetoric around immigration had become “ugly.”
“I think we have to look at all immigrants as human beings made in God’s image,” Kinzinger agreed. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a right to defend our territory and our borders and set an immigration policy for legal immigration.”
“Consider the way the president of the United States talks about it,” Tur implored. “He calls them criminals and rapists and he says that everybody that comes across the border is going to try to hurt you or your family.”
Kinzinger argued that Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants being racist is like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) calling a border wall “immoral.”
“I mean, we look at that and go, ‘How is a wall immoral?'” the congressman opined. “I mean, I have four walls around my house and they keep bad people out and critters out.”
“So that’s the same idea,” he added. “We’re just not talking to each other and using the right language to say, ‘We all mean well.’ Democrats mean well, Republicans mean well. Let’s just get our well-meaningness together and do something.”
