via mediaite.com:
President Donald Trump held a meeting on illegal immigration at the White House on Wednesday and one particular moment went viral… but for all the wrong reasons.
Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims expressed her frustrations with the federal government to the president regarding the handling of criminal illegal immigrants and cited MS-13 gang members as an example. Responding directly to that, Trump said the following:
“You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people, these are animals, and we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before.”
However, dozens of media outlets have only shared the response to Sheriff Mims, not including her question and comments that were directly about MS-13 and in the process purposefully mischaracterizing the president’s remarks to accuse him of referring to immigrants as “animals.”
CNN, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, and C-SPAN shared the clip on Twitter leaving out the crucial context of Trump’s response.