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‘Trigger My Gag Reflex’: John Kennedy Excoriates Open Borders Libertarian

Screenshot/X/John Kennedy

Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy excoriated a libertarian researcher for his “hyperbolic” social media posts blasting the Trump administration during a Tuesday Senate hearing.

Kennedy highlighted CATO Institute Director of Immigration Studies David Bier’s Bluesky posts criticizing the President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda at a U.S. Senate Budget Committee hearing on sanctuary cities. The senator singled out Bier’s February post claiming Democratic lawmakers urging soldiers to defy the Trump administration’s “illegal orders” did “not go far enough,” and another post in which Bier described the president’s immigration policies as a “population purge agenda.”

“In front of God and country, you said ‘They [Republicans] can troll their way into us accepting ethnic cleansing,'” Kennedy read from Bier’s social media post. “Your words, not mine. Did I read that correctly?”

“That was in regard to a Department of Homeland Security post about advocating for 100 million deportations,” said Bier in reply to the senator. “That is what DHS has tweeted from their own account, 100 million deportations!”

“Truth hurts, doesn’t it,” said Kennedy to Bier. “Truth can just gut you like a fish! And you don’t think this is hyperbolic?”

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“When I talk about population purge, I’m talking about the fact they’re trying to deport US born citizens, people born here as well,” said Bier in reply to Kennedy’s inquiry. “It’s not a mass deportation agenda. It is also an agenda intended to reduce the population of the United States including US born people! These are not hyperbolic statements!”

“What planet did you just parachute in from,” Kennedy told Bier. “You trigger my gag reflex!”

The researcher came under social media scrutiny for a post on X criticizing the Trump administration’s restrictions to refugees being accepted into the US. Bier said it was “just absurd” that “not a single refugee in the world was allowed to come legally, except for white South Africans.”

Bier told the Daily Caller News Foundation on March 5 that though reforms are necessary to the American refugee program, “those reforms should have focused on empowering Americans as individuals to take financial responsibility for resettling more refugees, not ending the process for nearly everyone.”