Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson’s anti-immigrant lies appear to leave CNN’s fact-checker exasperated

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“CNN won’t try to fact check Jackson’s extremely vague claim that undocumented immigrants will have ‘MORE FREEDOMS’ than most Americans in 2022,” Dale understandably said. I mean, where do you even start? But he does address the health care and voting lies.

“Unlike citizens, undocumented immigrants are ‘basically excluded from participation in all federal health programs,’ said Samantha Artiga, director of the racial equity and health policy program at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies US health care,” the report said. That’s not to say undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be covered, because they absolutely should be. Some parts of the country are trying to fix that on a state level. It’s the smart and moral thing to do. They pay taxes. They have bodies! But on a federal level, it’s just not the policy.

On voting, Jackson is also lying. While some localities are allowing undocumented residents to vote in local elections, they can’t vote on the state or federal level. I mean, if Jackson wants to talk voter fraud, there’s the reported illegitimate voters from Florida’s retiree Disneyland, The Villages. “Three of those who’ve been accused—Joan Halstead, Jay Ketcik, and John Rider—are very clearly Trump supporters,” Daily Kos’ April Siese wrote this month. “Halstead and Ketcik are registered Republicans. Though Rider has no party affiliation listed, his Facebook page appears to show multiple pro-Trump posts.”

There were also some shenanigans in Jackson’s home state, where a 72-year-old registered Republican reportedly put on sunglasses and tried to vote using his son’s name. The son is a registered Democrat. Meanwhile, Jackson is among the House insurrectionists who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election. But talking about any of that means Jackson can’t make up shit about undocumented immigrants, right? 

Jackson ran for Congress about a year and a half after he left the previous administration’s White House in disgrace, resigning his post as physician and withdrawing from a nomination to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“Trump had been so impressed with Jackson’s bedside manner that he nominated him last year to head the Department of Veterans Affairs; that nomination turned into one of the White House’s many no-vetting train wrecks when it almost immediately came to light that Jackson had an alleged history of drunkenness on the job and a reputation for dispensing pills, shall we say, lavishly to White House staffers, allegedly earning him the nickname ‘Candyman,’” Daily Kos’ Hunter wrote at the time.

A Defense Department inspector general report confirmed “’sexual and denigrating’ comments about a female subordinate,” among other abuses by Jackson, CNN reported last year. We likely don’t even know the extent of it, either: “The report also notes that the investigation into Jackson ‘was limited in scope and unproductive’ as White House counsel under Trump insisted on being present at all interviews of current White House Medical Unit employees, which had a ‘potential chilling effect’ on the probe.” But immigrants.





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