Yesterday the DNC sent a plant to a Ted Cruz campaign event in Storm Lake, Iowa. The woman, Ofelia Valdez, is an illegal immigrant who is here under Obama’s DACA program. She asked, in a quavering voice, what was clearly intended to be a gotcha question of Cruz that was designed to make him look bad. I think Cruz knocked his response out of the park:

Valdez: As a DACA holder myself, I worried about whoever comes next to the presidency and what’s going to happen to people like us. . . I think of myself as part of this community and you know, first day of presidency, you decide to deport, you know, people like myself, you know, it’s just very difficult to process.

Cruz: Well listen, I would note, if you’re a DACA recipient, that means that you were brought here illegally, and violating the laws has consequences. And one of  the problems with our broken immigration systems is that it is creating human tragedies. . . but I can tell you what the law is in every country on earth. If I illegally emigrate to England, or Germany, or France, or China, or Mexico and they catch me, they will deport me. That’s what every country on earth does. And there’s no reason that America’s laws should have less respect than the laws of every other country on earth. We should welcome people who come following the laws but there are consequences for breaking the law. And that is part of what makes America the nation that we are.

A couple of points about this particular story. First, this woman’s video was uploaded to the DNCC’s YouTube channel, which you can see if you open the video in YouTube itself. This story was actually covered, based on this clip, by allegedly objective news outlets. When is the last time you saw an allegedly neutral news story framed around an oppo clip put out by the GOP?

Second, this is more evidence that the people who are wringing their hands over Katherine Prudhomme-O’Brien confronting Hillary at a campaign event need to shut their yaps. The Democrats have a relentless operation that is designed to plug these people into every campaign stop every major GOP candidate makes. They always keep video with them and their goal is to get a Republican on the news saying something damaging, and they will resort to whatever it takes to get it.

The only reason Katherine Prudhomme-O’Brien had to be “rude” to get Hillary Clinton’s attention is that Hillary never places herself within shouting distance of actual people in a non-controlled environment, nor does she almost ever take questions from random audience members like Cruz does. She should not be given a pass on answering tough questions just because she can use the secret service to keep questioners at a literal physical distance from her.

In the end, Cruz handled this scenario as well as he possibly could have. Even as a guy who is a squish on immigration, it rankles me when people who are here illegally basically demand to not be prosecuted for breaking the law. There’s no other equivalent kind of lawbreaking where the criminals have an actual political party who is willing to assist them in saying they ought to not be prosecuted for their crimes. I know the DNCC thinks this clip will be damaging to Cruz by virtue of the fact that they are shopping it to the media, but I think it will be more damaging to them instead.