‘We Could Do This in Our Sleep At This Point’: Daniel Dale Blasts Trump for Yet Again Making Baseless Immigration Claims

CNN senior reporter Daniel Dale has fact-checked former President Donald Trump’s inflammatory immigration rhetoric so often, debunking the same false claims so many times, he could do it in his sleep, he insisted on Friday.

CNN News Central anchor Boris Sanchez and guest co-anchor Alex Marquardt brought out Dale Friday afternoon as Trump was speaking in Austin, Texas and replaying some of his favorite attacks on his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump “continues to paint a very dark picture,” said Marquardt, bringing up Trump’s recent “extraordinary comments” calling the U.S. a “garbage can” and then on Friday saying we were a “dumping ground” for immigrants.

The ex-president has “talked about bloodshed, suffering, and death all across our lands, so a very dark depiction of what’s going on here in the United States,” he continued, before introducing Dale “for a bit of a fact check.”

“He’s saying the same false stuff about immigration over and over, like, we could do this in our sleep at this point,” said Dale before launching into his now-familiar fact check:

He keeps telling this story about “The Congo.” First, it started with “some bad people from the Congo arriving at the border” — tough to fact check. Then it was “The Congo is emptying prisons to somehow allow criminals to come here as migrants.” Now, it’s “The Congo actually driving people to the border, taking them here.”

There is no evidence for any of this. I’ve repeatedly asked the Trump campaign, they cannot provide any. I’ve spoken to representatives of the governments of both the Democratic Republic of Congo, the neighboring Republic of Congo; they have no idea what he’s talking about.

This is nonsense with obvious racial undertones. He keeps saying that 21 million migrants have crossed the border under Biden and Harris. That is many millions too high; it’s about 10 million so-called border encounters — even if you add in the estimated 2 million so-called “got-aways,” people who evaded the Border Patrol, he’s still wildly exaggerating. So it’s the same claims over and over. They continue to be wrong.

Sanchez commented that it was “important also to differentiate in those numbers, the difference between encounters and actual people that came into the country.”

Dale agreed, saying, “millions of those people were quickly expelled right after they were encountered.”

“Exactly,” said Sanchez. “Is there any evidence — has there ever been any evidence that there is a large number of undocumented immigrants voting in federal elections?”

“No,” Dale said emphatically. “This is a tiny, tiny, tiny problem. There was no evidence it has ever changed the outcome of any federal election in any state.”

Sanchez added that “more often than not, it’s a clerical error with the voter rolls. And if they did, this is the kind of crime — it would be very, very easy to trace, which is why it doesn’t really happen.”

“And it’s — it’s already a felony,” said Dale. “It’s already a felony. So there are severe punishments for something with little reward for anyone who actually tries to do it, which is why it rarely happens, right?”

Watch the clip above via CNN.