>> In a video on Instagram, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
drew attention to what's happening at our border.
There are asylum seekers, many of whom are children, who are still being detained.
They're being put in these detention facilities which, quite honestly using detention facility
is a bit of a euphemism, and AOC called that out.
Now, I don't wanna give too much away from what she said, but just know that the video
you're about to watch has ruffled some right wing feathers, take a look.
>> The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border.
And that is exactly what they are, they are concentration camps.
And if that doesn't bother you, I don't, We can have, okay, whatever, I wanna talk to
the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that we should not, that never
again means something.
And that, The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the
home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing.
>> So this all started off with that video, right?
And if you notice, with Instagram story videos, especially when you go live, actually only
when you go live.
When you say something your audience likes, you get a bunch of hearts.
And so notice when she said concentration camps, she got a bunch of hearts.
>> Because no one is really willing to put themselves out there and really talk about
in a raw way what's happening at the border with these children.
But the fact that she used the word concentration camp upset some people on the right, including
Ben Shapiro.
So let's hear what he had to say about it.
>> Don't tell me you're not making a Nazi reference when you are obviously making a
Nazi reference.
Well, actually, it's unbelievable.
By the way, when you search concentration camps on Google, I just typed this in a minute
ago just to see what comes up.
The very first thing that comes up is Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec,
Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Chelmno, Dachau.
And then, the next few hits, Nazi concentration camps from Wikipedia.
Concentration camps, 1933 to 1939, the Holocaust encyclopedia.
Concentration camps from Britannica.com, internment center for political prisoners and members
of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security.
So even by the more anodyne definition of concentration camps, she is wrong considering
that concentration camps are used for political dissidents, not for people who are breaking
the law.
Does she consider American jails concentration camps?
Because those are technically places where we keep people who are civilians and not members
of the military for long periods of time.
>> Well, some of them yes.
>> Yeah, so look, I wanna break that down.
First of all, I just want to note that we are not the ones who put wrecking AOC's immigration
tweet, in that video.
It is his own Facebook page, that is his own video.
He decided to put that on his own video, like a juvenile, like a complete and utter child.
He was just on Larry Wilmore's podcast pretending as though he has some interest in having a
fair conversation.
He's supposedly a reasonable person.
He doesn't want to push toward the hateful rhetoric that we're seeing in the country.
You are part of the problem.
He pushes for that hateful rhetoric all the time.
Don't change your lingo because you're in the presence of Larry Wilmore, we all know
who you are.
But secondly, I just wanna bring up this idea that, no, these are all criminals, we're just
putting these criminals in these detention facilities, they're not concentration camps.
First of all, very interesting and convenient for him to leave out that these are asylum
seekers, and there is a legal way to seek asylum in America.
And what have we been seeing at the border?
You see border patrol agents blocking ports of entry to prevent asylum seekers from going
to the port of entry to seek asylum, okay?
Right now, let's say there is an undocumented immigrant in the country, that person gets
caught.
And they say I'm seeking asylum here, right?
They can do that.
Now you might argue they're breaking the law by being here illegally to begin with.
But that is not a federal crime, that is not a felony, right?
So his argument makes no sense.
He never talks about it from a factual perspective.
And secondly, or thirdly, I guess, the whole reason why we're doing this right now is because
Trump does not want people of color, namely people from Central America and Mexico.
Although the immigration from Mexico is now at a net zero, to be released, maybe with
an ankle bracelet or something.
He just wants them all in these prisons as a way of deterring other immigrants from coming
in.
But that hasn't worked out so well, has it?
And the conditions that they're living under is horrible.
So l don't know what his issue is.
These are concentration camps.
If you look at the actual definition, these qualify as concentration camps.
She didn't say they're execution camps, although dozens of people have died in these facilities.
>> Ben Shapiro, his whole shtick for his entire career has been to go to some college campus
and yell at some blue haired freshman who wants to identify as a different gender or
whatever.
And gets apoplectic cuz he thinks that they're like this policing of language on college
campus is dangerous PC culture that is ruining America and free speech.
And now he is doing the exact same thing to AOC.
He's policing language and getting outraged over some pedantic definition over the word.
It's completely hypocritical, it's absolutely maddening.
I mean.
>> Right.
>> The whole goal is to distract from the real issue, which is that we're rounding up
thousands of people at the border and putting them in camps.
>> We are concentrating people from Central American countries in these, what does he
wanna call them?
I'm very curious, what does he think they are?
>> He doesn't wanna talk about them.
>> Of course, he doesn't.
>> Yeah.
>> He is such a fraud.
And by the way, save me your fake outrage about this is what Jewish people had to go
through and this is not the same thing.
I mean, this is the guy who literally gave a speech giving the alt-right in America a
pass for their anti-Semitic statements, right?
You have people chanting the Jews will not replace us in Charlottesville, Virginia, and
he thinks, no, we don't have anti-Semitism problem in America.
As long as the Trump administration is doing everything it can to help Benjamin Netanyahu
in Israel, that's all that matters.
>> Yeah.
>> He went on this long rant just yesterday essentially defending a boy's ability to say
the N-word, but you can't say concentration camp?
>> That's such a great point.
>> It's ridiculous.
>> Yeah, it's crazy >> There's so much wrong with that, just this
idea that words don't mean anything if somebody has decided to use them for something else.
The President is doing the opposite.
He's trying to make us believe some weird definition of nationalism.
Even though everybody is saying hey that's never what it's used for.
And I'm sure he defends that, I'm sure he's okay with that.
If you say people who call themselves a patriot, like the ones who run into churches and shoot
up stuff, they're trying to, you don't want that definition of the word.
You want the old definition of the word, so we're trying to use the old one.
Why is that not okay?
Also, these people are not criminals.
You can legally seek asylum even if you cross the border illegally.
>> Yes.
>> Because sometimes when you're running for your life, you do not have a second to say
please and thank you.
>> Yeah, but he'll never get into that, right?
>> No.
>> Because it's inconvenient to get into those facts.
It's much more convenient for him to talk about his feelings toward these people and
justify the way that these people are being treated.
So let's go to actual scholars, people with credibility on this issue and hear what they
have to say.
First, there's Waitman Wade, who is a Holocaust and genocide studies scholar.
And he said, quote, concentration camps in general have always been designed, at the
most basic level, to separate one group of people from another group.
Usually, because the majority group, or the creators of the camp, deem the people they're
putting in it to be dangerous or undesirable in some way.
All right.
>> Yeah.
>> So who should I believe?
Should I believe this right wing talking head that's been propped up by conservative donors?
Or should I believe an actual Holocaust scholar?
I think I'm gonna go with the Holocaust scholar.
Let me give you more.
Jonathan Katz, who says, you need cattle cars to fit your definition?
How about this IG report from May that found detainees are packed so tightly into rooms
that they have to stand on toilets to breathe.
One cell with a capacity of 8 held 41 detainees.
A cell built for 35 held 155, okay?
So the conditions are terrible, I’ve already mentioned that dozens of people have died.
Ken Klippenstein this week actually published a report on TYT Investigates regarding the
Trump administration failing to report, and update a report on how many migrants are dying
in border patrol custody.
This is something that's been done since 2003.
And beginning in about May, I believe, of 2017, Trump administration decided we're just
not gonna update this list anymore.
Probably because it looks bad when dozens of migrants are dying under your custody.
And then finally, Chris Hayes.
>> Poor guy.
>> Chris Hayes, I don't know what he was doing but there has been a little bit of a-
>> This is my favorite thing.
>> Yeah, a little bit of an apology since this happened.
He had tweeted, last comment on this, concentration camp is an extremely charged term and I get
why many people are, in good faith, uncomfortable with the application for Godwin's Law purposes
among others.
So let's just call them detention camps and focus on what's happening in them.
Well, Mike Godwin-
>> The creator of Godwin's Law, it sounds like he created the law.
>> Yeah.
>> Which he is, yeah?
Okay, I'm not an expert on Godwin's Law but it sounds like he's created it.
>> Yeah, he did, he created the law, so let's hear what he has to say.
He responded to Chris Hayes by saying, Chris, I think they're concentration camps.
Keep in mind that one of their functions by design is to punish those individuals and
families who are detained.
So even the charged term is appropriate.
>> It's so frustrating cuz Chris Hayes should know better.
Chris Hayes has been in the game long enough.
He knows that people on the right wing do not argue in good faith.
So don't concede the ground to them, don't even grant them that.
It's not like that there's this reasonable argument to be had with a guy like Ben Shapiro.
Ben Shapiro does not care at all about concentration camps.
He only cares about the people who are in them.
So if the right people are in them, then he doesn't care.
If the wrong people, or people that are like him, are in them, then he does care.
That's the only thing that matters.
>> Absolutely.
>> Too much of journalism is based on ignoring facts just to not hurt the feelings of the
loudest people, which and then harms marginalized communities.
>> Yeah.
>> So now we are going to pretend that there's not a clear definition of this word, and say,
well, okay, let's just call it something else, let's just call it something else so we can
focus on this.
When it's like, no, your job should just be in facts.
>> Absolutely.
>> The fact is this, if you don't want to talk about it anymore that's fine.
You can do that because your name is on the show.
Your name is on that Twitter account.
You can do that without conceding to the people who are wrong.
>> Yeah, and I think this whole debate is, by some, an attempt to distract from what's
happening.
>> Yeah.
>> These people are living in horrible conditions.
The Trump administration has failed miserably in dealing with this issue.