Everyone knows that the Trump administration’s child separation policy is the kind of catastrophically immoral practice that even Josef Goebbels would officially disavow and call fake news. But that doesn’t mean that the people in charge of implementing it are going to stop.
Acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan knows the policy is indefensible, but he hasn’t tendered his resignation.
In a short but revealing interview, head of ICE Thomas Homan on Tuesday appeared to express discomfort with President Donald Trump’s policy of separating immigrant children from their parents.
When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer repeatedly pressed him on whether the policy is “humane,” Homan responded with a long pause and broke eye contact with the host. Even then, he refused to answer the question — which is really all the answer any viewer should need.
Mr. Homan’s boss, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, knows why she was chased out of a Washington D.C. Mexican restaurant (of all places) by protesting members of Democratic Socialists of America. She must know that that was only the beginning of the well-deserved harassment she’ll receive if this continues on. But she has not resigned.
Vice-President Mike Pence traveled to Philly last night and he knows why it did not go well.
Outside the event, hundreds of protesters descended on Center City during the Stop Separating Families rally to oppose President Donald Trump’s immigration policy. Several laid out children’s shoes in solidarity with the families being torn apart at the border.
The crowd chanted “City of brotherly love says no,” and “Say it loud, say it clear, immigrants are welcome here” during the protest. One woman also walked through the crowd for at least an hour with a speaker playing the sounds of a baby crying.
The only person who announced his resignation yesterday is Deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin, and he has several preexisting and completely distinct reasons for making for the bolt hole, including that he’s been repeatedly targeted with scathing accusations of disloyalty by people in the West Wing who will never trust a Bushie.
Yet, even if the burden of ripping kids from their parents isn’t causing an exodus, the list of people preparing to leave the White House is long and growing:
Mr. Hagin may be on the leading edge of a fresh wave of departures from a White House that has had record turnover. Among others who have been said to be considering leaving this year are [chief of staff] Mr. [John] Kelly; Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel; Marc Short, the legislative affairs director; Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary; Raj Shah, the top deputy press secretary; and Dan Scavino Jr., the social media director.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders was rumored to be done with the shitshow before White House press correspondents starting yelling at her about throwing children in cages. After that fiasco, she corralled Secretary Nielsen to stand at the podium and answer the damn questions only to be forced to watch helplessly as reporter Olivia Nuzzi played them a recording of screaming children being held parentless inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility. Sanders may be famously and implacably immune to ordinary pangs of conscience, but even she can sense that something has gone rancid. She’ll be happy to exit, and her deputies aren’t lining up to take her job.
Even in the vindictive dreamworld of the Trump White House, it can’t have escaped notice that the president is no longer even loosely tethered. To quote General Corman, we’re in Apocalypse Now territory and there’s no denying it:
“Well, you see Willard, in this war, things get confused out there: power, ideals, the old morality, practical military necessity. But out there with these natives, it must be a temptation to be god, because there’s a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil, and good does not always triumph. Sometimes, the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Every man has got a breaking point. You and I have one. Walter Kurtz has reached his, and very obviously, he has gone insane…He’s out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops.”
Nowhere was this clearer than in President Trump’s appearance yesterday before the National Federation of Independent Businesses.
The mix of racism, dishonesty, stupidity and cynicism in this thread on Trump’s NFIB speech is unparalleled since at least Roman times. https://t.co/Qmo3AeTUJt
— Martin Longman (@BooMan23) June 19, 2018
Here’s one of the least offensive things he said in that speech, although it’s representative of the truthfulness and accuracy of the entirety of his remarks.
And, by the way, Canada — they like to talk. (Laughter.) They’re our great neighbor. They fought World War II with us. We appreciate it. They fought World War I with us. And we appreciate it, but we’re protecting each other.
There was a story two days ago, in a major newspaper, talking about people living in Canada, coming into the United States, and smuggling things back into Canada because the tariffs are so massive. The tariffs to get common items back into Canada are so high that they have to smuggle them in. They buy shoes, then they wear them. They scuff them up. They make them sound old or look old.
No, we’re treated horribly.
There are no Canadian tariffs on American footwear nor American tariffs on Canadian footwear, and you can thank NAFTA for that.
“The president seems misinformed about footwear trade,” Matt Priest, the president and chief executive of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, said in a statement. “Canadians have no real reason to ‘smuggle’ their shoes because their government is already helping lower their costs through proper trade deals.”
Back in May, CNN estimated that the president had told over three thousand lies during his first 466 days in office, but as Ashley Parker of the Washington Post noted yesterday the pace has recently picked up.
Since Saturday, Trump has tweeted false or misleading information at least seven times on the topic of immigration and at least six times on a Justice Department inspector general report into the FBI’s handling of its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. That’s more than a dozen obfuscations on just two central topics — a figure that does not include falsehoods on other issues, whether in tweets or public remarks.
This cannot continue. And it won’t. Donald Trump, very obviously, has gone insane. He’s out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops. His dealings with North Korea and Russia are no more sane or less damaging that his dealings with asylum seekers and border crossers and their children.
People are already fleeing the White House, half his campaign is indicted, cooperating, in jail or waiting to be indicted. If Congress is the last to know how this will end, so be it. They will know soon enough.
“This cannot continue. And it won’t. Donald Trump, very obviously, has gone insane. He’s out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops. His dealings with North Korea and Russia are no more sane or less damaging that his dealings with asylum seekers and border crossers and their children.”
I beg to differ. R U Kidding me? Seriously?
Look, I love your work, don’t get me wrong, but… REPUBLICANS (not “Trumpists”) LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE what he’s doing. All of the, Katie.
They are SOOOO on Board with this. They’re in hog heaven right now. Brown babies being ripped literally from their mama’s Tatas… must give them a total orgasmic thrill.
Sure. It’s a complete giant sucking shit show. Shame inducing, morally reprehensible, so utterly WRONG so many ways to Sunday.
But let me repeat: REPUBLICANS, one and all, are screaming, clapping, cheering and are in utter bliss over Every. Damn. Thing. Trump. Is. Doing.
Nah, I don’t see the end in sight.
I wish I did.
I so wish I was wrong.
As I read somewhere else this morning: Trump could order one of those infants flown to Wash DC, and he could strangle it with his bare tiny hands, roast it on a spit, and eat live on TV.
REPUBLICANS would be out in unsurpassed numbers shrieking with unbridled joy.
Think I’m wrong? I don’t.
No this won’t end well, but Trump’s still the King of the Hill, I’m afraid.
And I surely don’t count one damn REPUBLICAN in Congress to stop supporting this monster. Nah Guh Happen.
We are so screwed. Those poor children are so screwed even worse. Unmitigated horror show.
Go on Facebook.
They will defend separation beyond death. Not their deaths, but the children’s deaths.
Booman did not mention that the administration is commonly using extermination language..infestation being one.
This is going to get worse before it gets better. Far, far worse.
.
Oh, yeah. It most definitely will get much, much worse before there is no longer any option but to motor up the Mekong River and deal with the horror.
Facebook hasn’t cleaned up the Russian propaganda on its platform; I doubt they ever will.
Yes, there are some Americans who have been made insane by propaganda and are forwarding the hate-filled lies themselves, but Facebook posts are not representative of the American people.
FB is a swamp of hate filled and half truth (at best) posts. Mine is seemingly not as bad as Nalbar says but certainly not good. I am truly amazed at how some folks I knew from years of working with them have become insane. I always knew they were right and far right but not this far. One of my sons no longer goes to FB. I may join him. At times I wonder if we may ever get past this scourge. Fanatics rule.
Facebook is in real trouble, yet they don’t seem to be able to do anything about it, or perhaps they just want to become the online Fox. Because of the not for profit I am affiliated with I have never engaged in political issues there, I use it to show pictures of my projects.
Politically it’s a troll factory.
Incrementalism is rampant. Trump poisons everything he touches, and he is taking followers places no educated should want to go.
.
At best, what the insanity and cruelty and ever-more-obvious lying will do is a more thorough sort of the electorate. But remember (and notice) that things are not static. Ever since Cohen got raided and especially now that Manafort is in prison, the president knows he’s in the deepest kind of shithole.
He’s not handling it well, and neither will anyone who has a self-interest in taking his side.
It is like the mainstream press is looking under the lamplight for their news stories.
But slowly in other corners of the news space, Democrats are flipping Republican seats one by one. Not all, but enough in districts that would have been previously out of reach, or not even contested.
One happened yesterday in Miami.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/article213376864.html
It would be just if Trump, Kelly and Nielsen stand before the gallows, and soon., Nazi bastards all.
. . . (i.e., complete severing of all sensory nerve pathways within a microsecond).
Why bother?
. . . <<la corde . . . la corde>> over her knitting? You think that works?
Only around 60% of Republicans are supportive of Trump’s child kidnapping scheme. That’s not nearly enough of the base. This is particularly true when less than 20% of independents and less than 5% of Democrats are supportive of this highly immoral policy.
Thanks for the stats, but here’s my generalized response to that (not dissing you personally):
How many of those 40% of Republicans who are allegedly against Trump’s heinous Nazi policy in regard to separating chilren from parents will happily continue to vote REPUBLICAN again and again and again???. I say: all of ’em, Katie.
I call sheer, unmitigated bullshit on that statistic. It’s meaningless.
I don’t think each and every one of those Republicans will vote this year. No, I don’t.
But even if they did, that would not be enough if independents turned away from their Party’s candidates en masse and the Democrats turned out in higher numbers than they have in recent midterms.
It’s not in the voting evidence we already have that they’ll all vote Republican either. If this was the case, Doug Jones and Conor Lamb wouldn’t have won. I don’t know how many times Booman has had to say it, or how many times I’ve cited data from David Shor: either converts are won, or Dems are in permanent minority status because of geography/gerrymandering.
And 55% of your base is low as low can get in fair and democratic elections. People follow leaders, whether they agree with their views or not, and adopt those stances. That’s why it takes leadership to weather times like this; we need enough people high up the leadership chain who will say “I refuse to go down that road”. It’s contageous, others will follow. Some people will follow those bad leaders to the gates of hell. Herbert Hoover won ~40% of the vote in 1932, after all.
Oh, I think only about 1/2 of Republicans are bigoted, racist, white supremacist, Nazi supporters who actually do LOVE LOVE LOVE the Presidents use of child torture to terrorize brown people.
The other half of Republicans really do regret that they have to support an ignorant hateful fascist traitor in exchange for their tax cuts.
. . . otherwise looks about right. (Certainly not suggesting 1/2 is unreasonable as an estimate.)
Sadly, although this seems incredible and impossible, I don’t see how it ends any time soon. Only the Republicans in congress can end it, and they are showing absolutely no indication that they will do so. Meanwhile the cult is stirred up to ever greater heights of angry passion, and the Faux News propaganda network and the rest of its constellation in the media makes sure to keep them that way. Trump still has all the powers of the presidency and his cabinet is loyal, and so is the VP. I think we’re in for a long, horrific slog.
We’ve moved past truth and reconciliation, I’ll say that much.
The old saw “Like rats leaving a sinking ship” is perfectly applicable here.
We will know when the Mueller investigation is about to strike true presidential paydirt…if indeed it ever does…when a large number of Trump staffers all leave within a relatively short period of time. The word will inevitably filter down from Mueller headquarters to Trump staffers before it appears in the headlines of the major centrist media. The following description of how and why rats are the first to know when a ship is going down transfers very nicely to the current White House. (Emphasis mine.)
The White House now is a totally reversed version of what it has been considered to be by the U.S.population for hundreds of years….a place where the highest officials in the government reside, make policy and rule. As with the rest of Donald Trump’s value system, up is now down and down is up. Therefore…like rats living in the bilge of a ship…White House staffers now live in the lowest part of the government, at least in terms of honor or truthfulness. They will be the first to see the water accumulating around their feet, and in true “Feets, do your stuff!!!” manner, they will start a stampede to get out and onto higher ground.
Not yet, though.
Watch.
Soon, I’m thinking.
Or at least wishing.
The bolded part of the above quote is wrong in only one sense. “Their continuous shrill cries of alarm quickly summon the rest of the rats from the hold. They build up into a large, frightened mass of rodents making a panicky exodus. This is, of course, a final calamity for the rats, since they will try to swim to eternity and usually do.”
In true DC Revolving Door fashion, all but the most guilty of these rats will not drown. Instead they will find shelter in the depths of the Deep State from whence they came.
And the swamp will maintain.
Watch.
Later…
AG
The above comment is now a standalone article.
When Rats leave A Sinking Ship.
If you wish to reply to it, please do so there.
Thank you…
AG
(…and encourage you? No chance.)
Two points.
“…a large number of Trump staffers…” and “…a relatively short period of time…”
Both open to valid question. Perhaps I should have said “…high-level Trump staffers” and “one news cycle.”
But I didn’t.
Sorry…I’ll try to meet your high criteria of truthiness in the future.
Plus:
You are “guessing,” Frank. The rats aren’t. When their feet start to get unaccustomedly wet, they head for the hills.
Duh!!!
Try to meet your own criteria of truthiness in the future.
Thank you…
AG
You actually managed to make a good point. I’m impressed.
Now all you need to do is remove the juvenile embellishment.
Actually, JO…it’s adult “embellishment.”
And I will continue to write just exactly as I please.
You don’t like it?
Don’t read it.
Duh.
AG
P.S.
Riiiight…
Now all you need to do is remove the juvenile snark.
Josh Marshall
A notice or reminder. President Trump is going to give one of his campaign-style rallies tonight in Duluth, Minnesota. Coming on the heels of what appears to be Trump’s aggressive and embattled mood over the family separation policy and anger that the furor is crowding out coverage of the Inspector General’s Report (yes, he’s actually mad about that), one can only imagine what that speech is going to be like.
This cannot continue. And it won’t
I’m also afraid that it will. Mon Dieu, the Apocalypse Now reference is spot on.
But when aberrant behavior gradually increases, it becomes normal. Trump would need to do something really bizarre to shock America, like shave his head or post his own sex tape.
Losing thousands of children qualifies as “really bizarre,” to put it kindly. The Singapore trip was really bizarre. His speech yesterday was the most unhinged yet.
Wonder how Trump’s Nazi Rally will go today in Duluth? I’ll betcha his fans will be shrieking in unbridled joy at his every utterance.
Yeah, he’s unhinged, but he’s got enough rat cunning and inherent narcissitic need to keep rallying the troops. Makes for good PR, which the usual suspects will promote to show how popular Trump is.
A popular Nazi? Hmm where did we hear that before?
So will Justin Trudeau show up at the next G7 wearing scuffed Timberlands (“Donald, you won’t believe the deal I got on these shoes!”)?
I hear commentary swirling around constantly that points a finger and labels Dems as having no leadership. It’s usually in response to the Trump shit show where people are looking to find leadership to get us out of this mess, as if there is a magic silver bullet that will make a clean shot into the heart of Trump’s policies and relieve us of these monstrosities.
There is no silver bullet, there is no single leader that will rise from this. There is no nifty trick. But, there is us.
The kind of us that knows the problems and is willing to put our collective shoulders to the task and become our own leaders; so write letters, emails, postcards, make phone calls and endure being put on hold and then talk like Brendan would. Join groups, march & maximize your voice. We can lead, we must lead
. . . rallying cry)
Stand up for your rights
…
Don’t give up the fight
He came into office insane. It’s only with time that his status becomes more obvious.
I want vulnerable Republican candidates to have to face the most brutal advertisements this cycle tying them to this criminal policy.
. . . framing! Indeed, let there be a flood of such horror-movie-themed ads, and let them begin yesterday!
(Dem political consultant industry: are you listening . . . or just in it for the grift?)
. . . (or some such), so why would Nike first import them here before exporting them to Canada if that subjected them to a tariff? Even as a lie, it makes no sense.
After today, I am more than ever convinced Trump does not complete his term – sometime between Nov 2018 and Nov 2020, there will be enough GOP congresscritters recognizing the need to bite the bullet and act.
At first a few, eventually some more, will recognize that eventual action is unavoidable – just not yet. Then, later, enough will realize that the time to act is on them. Because:
A) It’s Trump’s nature to keep pushing the envelope, try to get away with more and more until it reaches intolerability.
B) Trump’s mental health is deteriorating as well. Even if he is not displaying progressing senile dementia, his mental health will get worse anyway.
C) His physical health is likely to deteriorate in ways that impact his behavior.
This will be a really tough situation for them, because it seems likely that without Trump as a unifying force, it will be a real challenge to paper over the divisions within the party – Trumpists vs.anti-Trumpists, likely to include other powers within the party such as the Bush family.
The next two years will be pretty unpleasant.
You’re much more positive than I am.
I fervently hope that you’re correct, but color me utterly cynical that any such things will happen.
I don’t know that I’m quite being “positive,” Mike Pence does not look like much of an improvement to me.
Another reason his behavior will worsen is the people he is surrounded by are getting worse. As people leave and vacancies increase, his handlers will increasingly be composed of people like John Bolton and Stephen Miller who will reinforce and egg on his worst inclinations.