California’s governor declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that it is un-Christian to build a border wall to keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States. The “ominous” wall, said Gov. Jerry Brown, is reminiscent of the notorious “Berlin Wall,” and not a “Christian thing” to build.
“Trump’s supposed to be Mr. Religious Fellow, and I thought we had to treat the least of these as we would treat the Lord,” added Brown sarcastically.
Brown’s shameless and rather confused statement came during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” during which Brown laid out his vision for an open borders America. He began by equating America with communist East Germany by comparing the Southern Border wall to the Berlin Wall, which the East German communists built to keep people from fleeing their communist utopia, rather than keeping people out:
BROWN: The wall to me is ominous. It reminds me too much of the Berlin Wall. When I see that 30-foot wall I worry somehow are they trying to keep me in or keep them out? I really think people ought to be careful because there’s a lot of odor here of kind of a “strong man,” a kind of a world where you want the… ultimate leader here to be doing all of this stuff, and having a wall. Locking the people in is one of those characteristics. I think America ought to be very careful when we make radical changes like a 30-foot wall keeping some in and some out.
Though Brown never explained who exactly is desperately trying to flee the United States, he was not pressed on the confused comparison. Host Chuck Todd then asked the governor if he was going to push back legally on the wall, to which Brown replied that he plans to be “strategic” and “careful” rather than “bring stupid lawsuits”:
BROWN: I don’t like that wall, number one. And to the extent that that violates law certainly, I would enforce that. We’re not going to sit around and just play patsy and say, “Hey, go ahead. Lock us in. Do whatever the hell you want. Deport 2 billion, 2 million people.” No, we’re going to fight, and we’re going to fight very hard. But we’re not going to bring stupid lawsuits or be running to the courthouse every day. We’re going to be careful. We’ll be strategic.
Brown then turned to his “Christian thing” argument:
BROWN: We are going to do the right, humane and I would even say the Christian thing from my point of view. You don’t treat human beings like that. … Trump’s supposed to be Mr. Religious Fellow, and I thought we had to treat the least of these as we would treat the Lord. So I hope he would reconnect with some of his conservative evangelicals and they’ll tell him that these are human beings and they’re children of God, they should be treated that way.
