Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) appeared on ABC’s “The View” Monday to promote her new book and take a victory lap after winning a second term in the state where her father once served as governor.
While the hosts were cordial enough, co-host Sunny Hostin refused to back down. At one point, she even caught the governor not knowing basic facts about her own state.
First, Huckabee Sanders said that she focused on affordability and she attributes that to the success that the GOP had in her state. President Donald Trump made it clear that affordability was “a hoax.” The governor also commented that at a time when people are struggling and hurting, her state cut their taxes to ensure they had higher take-home pay and a term she coined “maximum wage.” It’s what she uses for helping people so they don’t get stuck in jobs that provide raises and opportunities for advancement.
Hostin asked what the minimum wage in Arkansas was. Huckabee Sanders didn’t know, saying she thought it was $15 an hour. It’s actually $11 an hour. The tipped minimum wage is $2.63 per hour.
They moved on to talk about immigration and Ana Navarro noted that immigrants make up about 10 percent of the Arkansas workforce. President Donald Trump told “60 Minutes” on Sunday that his policy was probably “too tough,” but no changes have been made.
Huckabee Sanders brought up a nurse who was killed by an undocumented immigrant in her state who was driving while intoxicated. “That person was deported during Trump one,” she said. The man was charged, convicted and got “20 years for Negligent Homicide and five years for fleeing the scene of an accident,” reported KATV at the time.
Trump, she said “put an intense focus on violent criminal illegals. I think that was the right place. I think it needed to happen.”
Navarro cut in to say that the overwhelming number of people being captured and deported have no violent criminal past. Huckabee Sanders said that such people are where Trump should focus, but he couldn’t do that without “securing the border” first.
Hostin cut in to ask about the people who were deported who’d never done anything criminal. The audience burst into applause at the question.
“And I think the president was right to say — I think if you listen to what he said, he’s saying, we shouldn’t have cracked down in those spaces,” said Huckabee Sanders. That crackdown continues, however.
She commented on the “broken immigration system” and “illegals” before Hostin said she wanted to move on, but quibbled that people are “undocumented.” The audience burst into applause again.
Huckabee Sanders said that when people break the law, “that’s the definition of illegal.” By that definition, Americans could then be “illegals.”
“Yeah, people are not illegal, they may commit crimes, but they are not illegal. But let’s move on,” Hostin said before she began asking her question.
Huckabee Sanders shrugged and jumped in to say, “Actually, that’s the same.”
Hostin quipped, “It’s not.”