NBC News’ Ben Collins called out Donald Trump Jr. after the president’s son at the temerity to like a tweet referencing Ann Coulter who claimed during an interview on Monday that a New Yorker article described “how these kids, these kids are being coached” in asylum interviews. According to Collins, the New Yorker article doesn’t exist:
The president's son liking an Ann Coulter quote entirely falsely calling children detained in cages "actors," referring to a New Yorker article that doesn't exist. https://t.co/ia2VtWeTDB
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) June 18, 2018
Well, that’s news to Suketu Mehta, author of the New Yorker article Coulter cited:
If you had 3 functioning brain cells, @AnnCoulter, you wouldn't be mentioning my New Yorker article about asylum to support your racist positions. It's not about child actors, it's about narratives demanded of adults by a broken asylum system @oliverdarcy
— suketu mehta (@suketumehta) June 18, 2018
And then used the “3 functioning brain cells dig” from Mehta to hit back at her critics:
If you had 3 functioning brain cells, @oliverdarcy, you'd be able to find 1 article on how phony asylum cases are. NEW YORKER, 2011 – https://t.co/voVMiW9YJk https://t.co/MWn9AZppNh
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) June 18, 2018
And this angered Mehta even more:
If you had 3 functioning brain cells, you wouldn't be mentioning my New Yorker article about asylum to support your racist positions. It's not about child actors, it's about narratives demanded of adults by a broken asylum system
— suketu mehta (@suketumehta) June 18, 2018
Whatever, dude. Here are a few passages from Mehta’s article on an African immigrant named “Caroline” (not her real name) who met with an asylum consultant named “Laurent” (not his real name) on how to lie your way through the asylum process:
Caroline knew people who really had been raped; she had heard their stories. But she believed that she was far from being the only asylum seeker at the torture survivors’ center who was lying or exaggerating. “Everybody’s story is a mixture of what is true and what is not,” she said. Caroline had been tutored in how to act like a rape victim by her landlady in the Bronx, who hadn’t been raped, either, but had successfully applied for asylum. And Caroline was also getting help in crafting her narrative from a Rwandan man I’ll call Laurent, who was a sort of asylum-story shaper among central Africans.
And:
Advising Caroline about her asylum narrative, Laurent said, “When you make up a story, make it yours. No one knows your story better than you.” He has helped three people with their stories; two of them were successful in getting asylum.
Laurent then admitted he made up his story, too:
“To tell you the truth, even my story was made up,” he said. He didn’t apply for asylum as a Rwandan refugee, because “I didn’t want to compromise my family in Rwanda.” So his story was about Burundi. “I know the politics of Burundi, and so I could make it up,” he said. At the asylum hearing, the officer asked him specific questions about the geography of his narrative: “Where was the police station? Where was the swimming pool?” The officer kept referring to geographical data that she had obtained from the C.I.A., but Laurent’s information was more recent, and he told her so. She checked, and found that it was true.
Don’t like what Ann said? Fine. But the New Yorker article exists and it backs up what Ann said in her controversial interview. Oh, and the tweet from Collins is totally Fake News and he needs to admit that.
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