Friday on MSNBC’s “Deadline,” network host Al Sharpton said President Donald Trump’s rhetoric on immigration is attempting to turn immigrant children “into murderers and rapists.”

Discussing the 2016 Republican primary presidential candidates allowing then-candidate Trump to take a hard line on immigration, Sharpton said, “They played it like they were using the old model, but someone should have said, ‘Let me tell you something, I’m not accepting this new model where human beings are not human beings.’ They should have taken him head-on. They fought his fight and then they started trying to play along with his fight plan when they should have called him out and said ‘No, America does not stand for this kind of dehumanizing people. Your mother and father-in-law came here as immigrants, Donald. What are you talking about? You don’t believe this. You’re playing games.’ No one took him on. If someone calls him out and takes them on, he is a bully. He can’t take that. I’ve been in the room arguing with him, unless you accept his premise, if you take his premise you come to this conclusion. You have to take the premise upstairs and don’t play his game.”

He added, “We’re talking about children, children didn’t come here to do anything to anybody. They don’t know where they are. I have been to Texas as well as to the border. Those kids have no idea. Their parents brought them here for a better life, and they’re being turned into murderers and rapists. How dare you, and someone should say it to his face.”

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