Trump caved! But do not get too excited about that. The immigration disaster that we are experiencing right now is no accident. Trump knows the outrage is temporary but the divide and conquer longer lasting. He got all the nativists, xenophobes, and racists reengaged. “Misión cumplida.” Mission accomplished.
According to CNBC:
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he plans to sign an executive order designed to keep families together during detention on the U.S.-Mexico border. “I’ll be signing something in a little while that’s going to do that,” he told reporters during a White House event after saying he wanted families to be kept together. “I’ll be doing something that’s somewhat pre-emptive and ultimately will be matched by legislation I’m sure.”
Trump added: “We’re keeping families together, but we have to keep our borders strong. We will be overrun with crime and with people that should not be in our country.” The order is expected to allow families to be housed together even while adults in the family are being detained or prosecuted for crossing the U.S. border illegally or for seeking asylum at the border outside of a designated border entry point.
Speaking at the start of a meeting with members of Congress, Trump said he faced a dilemma as criticism of his administration’s policy has grown louder in the past week. “The dilemma is if you’re weak, … the country is going to be overwhelmed with [undocumented immigrants]. … If you’re strong, then you don’t have any heart. Perhaps I’d like to be strong,” the president said, according to pool reporters in the room.
Yes, Trump caved
While too many are speaking about the fact that Trump caved as some a win, I beg to differ. It is true that most of the media except the Right Wing one, of course, refuted Trump’s assertion that separating families was a Democratic law. That said, in the same breath they’ve given him too much airtime to lie and blame Democrats for his policies. In doing so, Trump continues to convince his base that he is just following the law. And for the low information otherwise nonideological voter, they do not know what to believe.
During this period of child internment by the Trump administration, many stayed silent or outright defended the president’s evil act. We must call out these people and keep the focus on them as well as Americans promoting a divisive immoral stance anathema to all that America is supposed to be.
Supporting politicians must pay the price. We must expose the media personalities who gave Trump cover as unreliable and evil for using their platform to lie and materially hurt other human beings. These are some of the same people who supported the alleged pedophile running for Senate in Alabama, Roy Moore.
The Daily Beast expose on Carlson says it best.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson is very concerned about people likening him to a certain genocidal dictator. “The cost is entirely on you,” Carlson told his audience in a Monday night monologue in which he warned of immigrants moving to their neighborhoods, “but don’t complain, or else they will call you ‘Hitler.’” But Carlson’s monologue wouldn’t have been far out of place on a white supremacist forum. Hours after ProPublica released disturbing audio of immigrant children who had been separated from their parents at the U.S. border, Carlson told viewers the immigrants were coming “to change your country forever.”
In a screed against what he termed as the “ruling class,” Carlson (a millionaire who went to aristocratic Rhode Island boarding school St. George’s) defended the separation of immigrant families by forecasting “the collapse of the American family.” His rhetoric, intentional or not, plays into textbook white nationalist claims about traditional family structures and the white race. “You think any of these people really care about family separation?” Carlson said of liberals. “If they did, they’d be worried about the collapse of the American family, which is measurable and real, but they’re not worried about that. In fact they welcome that collapse because strong families are an impediment to their political power, and that’s why they’re always lecturing you about the patriarchy and the evil of the nuclear family.”
And then there is Laura Ingraham.
“More kids are being separated from their parents and temporarily housed in what are essentially summer camps, or as The San Diego Union-Tribune described them today, as basically looking like boarding schools,” Ingraham said Monday. “The American people are footing a really big bill for what is tantamount to a slow-rolling invasion of the United States.”
It is clear that the President’s posse was ready. They completed the job to reinforce the base. Now the president plays nice. All is good. The mainstream media goes on to the next distraction. Democrats forget to continue pointing out the evils. Status quo is maintained. Trump wins again.
That is the cycle we must fight against. We must stop the insanity.