Liberal journalists on Twitter falsely accused Attorney General Jeff Sessions of calling illegal immigrants "filth" in a speech he delivered on the Mexican border Tuesday.
Politico reporter Josh Dawsey took a partial quote from a Wall Street Journal story on Sessions' speech out of context, tweeting that Sessions described illegal immigrants as filth. From there, it caught the eye of Tufts professor and writer of the Washington Post's Spoiler Alerts blog Daniel Drezner, and the misinterpretation spread throughout Twitter.
Filth. He described illegal immigrants as "filth."
Whatever your views on immigration that's f**king embarrassing for a US official to say. https://t.co/sl5x5uLObK— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) April 11, 2017
Sessions to border agents: "It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth."https://t.co/lBHKcvaq0Q
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) April 11, 2017
In other news, the Attorney-General pledged to rid the nation of the "filth" of Latin American immigrants.
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 11, 2017
Sessions' speechwriter goes full Stormfront in border speech https://t.co/LgCta8cNP6 via @TPM pic.twitter.com/mtTXsKKQYG
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 11, 2017
Spicer downplays the Holocaust while Sessions' speech calls undocumented immigrants "filth." In case you were wondering.
— Pulitzer Non-Winner (@evan7257) April 11, 2017
'We take our stand against this filth': Sessions speech goes full-on white nationalist. https://t.co/4KxKe5Trds
— Gabe Ortíz (@TUSK81) April 11, 2017
But as the transcript of his prepared remarks makes clear, Sessions was not calling illegal immigrants "filth." Instead, the attorney general was actually referring to violent Mexican gangs like MS-13 as "filth":
Let’s stop here for a minute. When we talk about MS-13 and the cartels, what do we mean? We mean criminal organizations that turn cities and suburbs into war zones, that rape and kill innocent civilians and who profit by smuggling poison and other human beings across our borders. Depravity and violence are their calling cards, including brutal machete attacks and beadings.
It is here, on this sliver of land, where we take our stand against this filth.
The Wall Street Journal truncated those remarks in its write-up, but still made it clear Sessions was talking about criminal organizations. "'We mean criminal organizations that turn cities and suburbs into warzones, that rape and kill innocent citizens... It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth,'" the Journal summarized.
As it turns out, Buzzfeed's Adrian Carrasquillo later reported that the whole controversy amounted to nothing: Sessions ending up diverging from his prepared remarks and omitted the words "against this filth" entirely.
Once Drezner saw the context of Sessions' words, he took to Twitter again to apologize.
Reading Sessions' prepared remarks I think I over-interpreted his language. Apologies for the quick Twitter trigger. https://t.co/GJ48yIoLnI pic.twitter.com/0asvGCr2vj
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) April 11, 2017
When asked for comment, Sessions' spokesman Ian D. Prior said, "As the Attorney General said, we must take a stand against filth like MS-13 and the cartels that turn cities and suburbs into warzones, that rape and kill innocent people, and that profit by trafficking in drugs and people. It is unfortunate that there are misinformed people that think that we need to treat such violent criminals as if they deserve anything but the worse kind of condemnation."