Basically the PSL members tried to say (correctly imo) that the conversation around cartels is an attempt to make all migrants look like they are criminals.

Andrew pushes back saying he’s not talking about migrants, but the actual organized cartels that do exist and do bad things.

one of their responses was to say “I feel like they are pushed into a corner of survival and when you’re pushed into survival mode people do what they have to do to survive.” imo this was the real fumble, they could have said the same thing much better to not be interpreted as “a billion dollar cartel killing tens of thousands of people is actually just an organic survival program,” which is essentially how Andrew’s intentional editorializing framed it.

They immediately cut to shot of a cartel member and the audio of a news piece saying they had a “40 mm grenade launcher.” as the PSL members spoke, they intercut clips of militarized cartel members and the violence they are perpetrating, intentionally editing it to basically make it look like the PSL members are stupid for saying such things, because look how extremely bad the cartels are, how can you justify this in any way whatsoever?

Then it cuts to andrew in a news room doing a “segment for the first time called theory vs reality where we take relatively bad faith statements [CUT TO: PSL member’s sticker saying I heart inmigrantes] by passionate americans and follow them to the source to get the real scoop. now what you just heard was the undermining of the very real danger and threat posed by the Mexican drug cartels and the unfortunate grouping of that assessment as being part and parcel of Trump’s anti migrant sentiment. I believe that it’s this unnecessary intersectionality imposed by reactionaries of all kinds that most potently obscures issues to the point of shutting down the conversation.”

literally calling PSL reactionaries here