'Admit it!' Bill O’Reilly goes ballistic on Chris Cuomo for not wanting to 'hunt' illegal immigrant criminals

NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo and Bill O’Reilly threw down in a heated debate on Tuesday night about “hunting down” criminal illegal migrants.

O’Reilly joined Cuomo for a fiery conversation in which the two couldn’t agree on the administration’s immigration figures or the messaging around Border Czar Tom Homan’s no-exceptions approach to mass deportations.

“When you have more than a million criminal aliens coming into the United States in four years, more than a million, you are going to have chaos. You’re going to have violence. You’re going to have things that happen that shouldn’t happen,” O’Reilly said.

Cuomo argued officials throw out a lot of numbers in regard to immigration and suggested they are “cooked” for political purposes.

He argued officials should be focused on illegal migrants guilty of violent crimes, rather than simply being in the country illegally, which he compared to doing “80 in a 55.”

“I don’t know how you arrive at a million fentanyl dealers, human traffickers and gang bangers… I don’t know where that number comes from. You might as well say 100 million,” Cuomo said.

“The number comes from the federal government. You can look it up as they, as Yogi Berra would say. But it’s an estimate, okay? More than a million people are being hunted by executive order of the president of the United States, that I believe, to get them deported because they committed crimes. Now, you don’t like that,” O’Reilly told Cuomo.

He accused Cuomo of not being “bullish on hunting down criminal illegal aliens.”

“That’s not true,” Cuomo responded, adding, “I don’t like the idea of hunting down misdemeanors, okay? You wanna hunt down a killer, go hunt them down. But that’s not who they’re getting, Bill. Their own numbers, which are obviously cooked, show that it’s barely 50-50.”

“The official number from Homeland Security is more than one million criminals. Now that means they could have committed crimes in Venezuela, okay?” O’Reilly said.

“Could mean a lot of things,” Cuomo countered.

O’Reilly eventually pushed Cuomo to “admit” he doesn’t want criminal illegal migrants “hunted” down, while Cuomo argued it’s the “messaging” he has a problem with.

Check out the exchange below:

BILL O’REILLY: You do not want to hunt them down. Neither does the Democratic Party.

CHRIS CUOMO: That’s just not true.

O’REILLY: You don’t want to do it! Admit it! You don’t want to do it!

CUOMO: Bill, it’s not true. You can keep insisting, Bill. You can say it a few more times, like your friend Mr. [Donald] Trump. Doesn’t make it true. Repetition is not veracity.

O’REILLY: I’ll find 10 quotes.

CUOMO: Go ahead. Find me a quote of me saying —

O’REILLY: Alright, there’s one more point I want to make about —

CUOMO: No, no, no. I want some money on this one. What do you want to bet you cannot find me saying — I’ll say the same thing you said, which is…remember what you said, Bill O’Reilly? Because I can pull it for you in about eight seconds. It’ll never happen, logistically, legally, financially, you’ll never be able to get them all out. Remember saying that, Bill? Because you did.

O’REILLY: It’s all different things.

CUOMO: Oh. We’re talking about hunting. So when I say it’s impractical, and that talking about hunting them is not the best messaging when you keep killing people, you don’t like that. But when you said it’ll never happen, that’s a fact. Come on, Bill.

O’Reilly: You just admitted my whole thesis was true.

CUOMO: What is?

O’REILLY: You don’t want them hunted.

CUOMO: That’s not true. I don’t like the messaging.

O’REILLY: You don’t want criminal aliens hunted.

CUOMO: You shouldn’t hunt human beings, okay?

O’REILLY: Okay! Just admit it!

The two then sparred over the ICE officer behind the fatal shooting of Renee Good, one of two American citizens fatally shot by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, being back on the job.

O’Reilly said he’s not “okay” with what happened to Good, adding that he’s criticized ICE tactics plenty.

“Are you okay with a guy being back on a job?” Cuomo asked.

“No, I’m not,” O’Reilly said, adding, “I have criticized ICE and Homeland Security many times, and I can provide those clips.”

Watch above via NewsNation.

Jason Cohen contributed to this report.

The post ‘Admit It!’ Bill O’Reilly Goes Ballistic on Chris Cuomo for Not Wanting to ‘Hunt’ Illegal Immigrant Criminals first appeared on Mediaite.