Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) lied this week when confronted during an interview that aired Sunday night about past remarks that he made about President Donald Trump’s border wall, claiming that his remarks were taken “out of context.”
Allred, who is running as the Democrat Senate nominee against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), made the false claim while being asked about campaign ads that he is facing where Cruz quotes Allred as saying: “If they build that racist wall, my generation is the one that will tear it down.”
When asked if he still believed that the wall was “racist” and if he still supports tearing it down, Allred, who is trailing Cruz by several points in the polls, claimed: “Well, they were talking about, that’s a comment taken out of context, really.”
He immediately deflected from answering question and attacked Cruz for not supporting the Democrats’ border security bill that many experts argued would actually make the Biden-Harris border crisis even worse than it already is.
In a @tedcruz ad, @ColinAllredTX says “If they build that racist wall, my generation is the one that will tear it down.”
He told us that quote was “taken out of context” and walls are “an important part” of border security.
But, was that quote “taken out of context?” No.
1/2 pic.twitter.com/YyCzKCpftr— Ryan Chandler (@RyanChandlerTV) September 8, 2024
A clip from Allred’s 2018 primary race shows that he did make the remarks in the Cruz ad against him and that they were not taken out of context.
Allred called the issue “the biggest issue facing the Democratic Party”, claiming that Trump’s immigration plan was “a racist plan.”
“This plan is intended to take us back to a period in which we had a race-based immigration system,” he said. “I want to really briefly talk about this racist wall, because the symbol of this country cannot be a fence with a barbed wire on top of it. It has to remain the Statue of Liberty.”
“And I tell you what, if they build that wall, my generation will be the one that tears it down, because we will not have this in this country,” he said. “We will not have… We’re not going to waste billions of our dollars on a racist campaign promise, and we’re not going to turn the symbol of this country into a wall with barbed wire on top of it.”
Here’s the context from Allred’s 2018 primary.
“This racist wall… if they build that wall, my generation will be the one that tears it down.”
Two things can be true at the same time:
Allred’s immigration views have evolved since 2018, and that quote is perfectly in context. pic.twitter.com/5BBVDddjkh— Ryan Chandler (@RyanChandlerTV) September 8, 2024