CNN Commentator Ana Navarro Files Nails During Immigration Debate With Trump Supporter

CNN commentator Ana Navarro filed her nails as a President Donald Trump supporter attempted to undercut data about the amount of crime committed by undocumented immigrants while on CNN's Cuomo Prime Time on Wednesday, The Hill reported.

Steve Cortes, who was on Trump's Hispanic Advisory Council, falsely claimed that studies were conflicted about whether undocumented immigrants committed lower levels of crime than native-born citizens. He was challenged by host Chris Cuomo, who said evidence overwhelmingly indicates that undocumented immigrants commit crime at lower rates. Navarro began filing her nails as Cortes started talking again.

"You can do your nails," Cortes said on Thursday in response to Navarro's disinterest. "You know who can't do their nails are people who have been killed, Ana, by dangerous known illegal aliens who have been allowed to stay in this country because of the leftist policies that people like you promote in so-called sanctuary cities."

Cortes then called Navarro, a conservative who supported Jeb Bush during the 2016 primaries but opposes Trump, a "leftie."

Trump "might be the most conservative president since Calvin Coolidge. So if you oppose the conservative policies of this president, you are de facto leftie."

Navarro responded that Trump was previously a Democrat and questioned the president's conservative values. "Do you think that having sex with a stripper is conservative values? Do you think cheating on the stripper with a Playboy bunny is conservative values?"

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Ana Navarro speaks at the Food Network & Cooking Channel New York City Wine & Food Festival in October 2018. Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for NYCWFF

The president has depicted immigrants as criminals since declaring his campaign for office. During a series of tweets in November, after the migrant caravan reached the southern border, Trump called the migrants "stone cold criminals."

During recent statements advocating for a border wall and in his prime-time speech on Tuesday, Trump cited a number of statistics about migrants and criminality. A number of these claims were misleading, according to the Washington Post.

In January 2018, The Washington Post gave Trump four Pinocchios -- which at the time denoted the least truthful rating given by the outlet -- to Trump's claims that illegal immigrants brought "with them crime, tremendous amounts of crime." The outlet noted that are not comprehensive data from states to validate or invalidate the president's statements. However, the majority of existing studies do not indicate that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at higher rates than U.S. citizens or legal immigrants.

A frequently referenced Cato Institute study using 2015 crime data from Texas, which was published in 2018, said undocumented immigrants were convicted of murder 25 percent less than native-born citizens, NPR reported. It also said that undocumented immigrants were convicted of sexual assault 11.5 percent less and of larceny 79 percent less than native citizens.

The study said that undocumented immigrants were found guilty of crimes including gambling, kidnapping and smuggling at higher rates than Americans.

A study published in the journal Criminology last year found that areas with higher proportions of undocumented immigrants do not have higher crime rates, The Washington Post reported.

Uncommon Knowledge

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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

About the writer


Daniel Moritz-Rabson is a breaking news reporter for Newsweek based in New York. Before joining Newsweek Daniel interned at PBS NewsHour ... Read more

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