DNC Vice Chair David Hogg and former chief of staff to President Donald Trump Reince Priebus clashed during a fiery exchange on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” Sunday over the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Priebus, who served as RNC chairman from 2011 until 2017, when he was tapped to become Trump’s chief of staff during his first term, began the war of words when he said he would have Hogg “removed from the party” if he were in charge of the DNC. Priebus was responding to a question about how he would handle Hogg’s pledge to spend $20 million to primary older Democratic incumbents.
“It’s $20 million out of the DNC’s pocket. You can’t be on the board of the fishing and forest company and on Greenpeace at the same time,” Priebus said.
Hogg’s plan has drawn the ire of his party, with a longtime Democratic strategist calling the Parkland shooting survivor a “contemptible little twerp.” The former RNC chair went on to slam the Democrats, accusing them of being a party in disarray that does not know how to effectively counter Trump.
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“The Democrats are a complete mess. They have no movement… They have no message… They have no leader. It doesn’t get any worse than that. You’re defending Harvard, you’re traveling to El Salvador to defend MS-13 gang members,” Priebus said.
The ex-Trump official was referring to Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s, D-Md., trip to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Garcia, an illegal immigrant residing in Maryland, was deported to El Salvador, his home country, and incarcerated in the country’s notorious CECOT mega-prison. Democrats have decried that Trump deported Garcia, who had no criminal record, in defiance of a court order to a country that subsequently jailed him without due process.
The Trump administration has claimed that Garcia is a member of MS-13, and released records showing his wife had once accused him of domestic violence. Van Hollen flew to El Salvador to meet with Garcia on Friday and advocated for his release. El Salvadorian officials announced Garcia had been transferred to a different prison prior to Van Hollen’s arrival.
Hogg interjected and accused Priebus of deliberately misleading the audience about Garcia’s criminal status.
“This was not an MS-13 gang member, and you damn well know that,” Hogg replied. “The administration admitted this was wrong. In America, we have due process. We are a land of law and order, and this administration is repeatedly showing time and time again they do not care about what the Supreme Court says. They do not care about the rule of law, and you cannot defend sending people to another country where they don’t have rights.”
Priebus responded that polls indicate that the majority of Americans support mass deportations of illegal immigrants and that “every intel community agency” had concluded that Garcia was a member of MS-13.