Frequent MSNBC guest Elie Mystal claimed that Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., relocating migrants to Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday is the same as luring “teenagers” into a van with “candy.”
The Nation correspondent added that DeSantis and the people who helped him pull off this stunt should be charged with “kidnapping.” He also implied that people would have been more outraged by the governor’s move if the migrants “were white.”
Mystal made his comments during Saturday’s episode of MSNBC’s “The Cross Connection with Tiffany Cross.” Mentioning his piece for The Nation, which made the same assertion, Cross stated, “You wrote about these governors shipping migrants to different countries. Uh, we saw just this morning that a group of migrants were dropped off in front of Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence. We have seen migrants get dropped off in Martha’s Vineyard.”
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“This sounds like it could be breaking the law,” she claimed, asking, “Is this human trafficking? Is this kidnapping? Is this legal?”
Before giving his answer, Mystal claimed that “there is nothing wrong” with the country finding the best system “for handling influxes of immigrants and new Americans.” He added, “We should have a national immigration plan.”
He then blamed “fascist” Republicans for getting in the way of a good immigration plan, stating, “You know who stops us from having a national immigration plan? Republicans. Republicans are the ones who force us to do this in a state-by-state way. And now particular Republicans – particularly fascist Republicans – are trying to ship migrants around the country to make them suffer.”
In addition to looking to make them “suffer,” Mystal called the GOP efforts to relocate migrants an attempt to “troll the libs.”
Finally getting to Cross’ original question, he stated, “What I believe is happening here is kidnapping.” He clarified, “It’s not quite [unintelligible] human trafficking just because the way our laws are written are kinda specific in terms of trafficking for the purposes of sex or labor.”
“Trafficking for the purposes of having a laugh at liberals is not a human trafficking violation as I read the law,” he admitted. “However, kidnapping is a thing,” he stated. Kidnapping by trick is a thing. Telling people that you are going to take them one place and sending them someplace else is a form of kidnapping.”
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He supported that claim with a reference to a quote from the 1996 movie “A Time to Kill.” “And I can prove that to you if I do the Matthew McConaughey thing, ‘Now imagine they were white,’” he stated, somehow implying that the public’s lack of concern about the relocation is racist.
He then made his enticing kids with candy comparison, stating, “Imagine Ron DeSantis goes up to a group of white teenagers, offers them some candy and says, ‘Hey, I’m gonna take you to Dinsey World if you get in my van.’ And then Ron DeSantis drives them to Bush Gardens.”
“That’s kidnapping!” he exclaimed, adding, “You’re not allowed to do that.” Concluding his point, he declared, “And so the people who did that, the organizers who did that, and perhaps even the governor, they should be charged with kidnapping.”
