The Trump administration’s defense of the indefensible goes off the rails (updated)

President Donald Trump on Monday, with his sycophant Vice President looking on adoringly with puppy dog eyes, announced that the plaque bearing the text of the poem by Emma Lazarus,”The New Colossus,” mounted inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, with its famous inscription of “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” is no longer operative in America.

Someone please check to see whether Stephen Miller has had this plaque removed from the Statute of Liberty.

Screen Shot 2018-06-19 at 8.18.15 AM

Also on Monday, a recording of immigrant children calling out desperately for their parents after being separated from them by United States immigration authorities was released by the investigative news site Pro Publica. The audio went viral in the media.

Also on Monday, These photos were the Trump administration’s attempt to quiet criticism. They’re only increasing critics’ horror.

As attention to the issue of child separation reaches a new high on Monday, the Trump administration [sought] to defend what critics call a “cruel” and “immoral” policy. It’s even releasing photos and video of the facilities where children separated from their parents are being held — but far from tamping down criticism, it’s only increasing critics’ horror.

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Children in cages, like dogs in a kennel. Yeah, this is not making your case.

Trump sent his cabinet secretaries out to defend his immoral, cruel and inhumane family-separation policy on Monday.

The most over-the-top performance came from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, John Kelly’s hand-picked successor. (Note: I strongly suspect Nielsen’s prepared statement was written, at least in part, by Stephen Miller. This was not her usual manner of speaking.)  Kirstjen Nielsen’s mighty struggle to explain separating families at the border, annotated.

Nielsen flatly lied that “there is no policy.” She must have missed Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III announcing his new Zero Tolerance Policy on April 6, 2018.

Nielsen repeated the lies of Donald Trump and other Republicans that they are just following existing law and court decisions. These shameless lies have been repeatedly debunked. Five whoppers from President Trump’s impromptu news conference; AP FACT CHECK: GOP now blames court for family separation; Fact Check: Republicans Misplace Blame for Splitting Families at the Border. Four Pinocchios for White House’s claims on why families are being split at the border.

Nielsen flatly lied that the administration’s policy is not designed as a deterrent to immigration, even though former Department of Homeland Security Secretary and current chief of staff, and her former boss, as well as White House White Nationalist Policy Advisor Stephen Miller are on record saying it is. How Trump Came to Enforce a Practice of Separating Migrant Families. John F. Kelly, then the homeland security secretary, said in March 2017, “in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network.” [A]dvocates inside the administration, most prominently Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s senior policy adviser, never gave up on the idea.

Nielsen flatly lied that the Trump administration is not using immigrant children “as pawns” to get leverage with Congress for Trump’s border wall, even after Axios.com reported this morning that the president views the family-separation issue “as leverage, and will try to get funding for a border wall or other concessions for a rollback of the policy.”

And Nielsen flatly lied using bogus facts and figures taken entirely out of context. How to mislead with statistics, DHS Secretary Nielsen edition.

After this jaw-dropping performance, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), other Democratic lawmakers called on Kirstjen Nielsen to resign:

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) on Monday said Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen should step downdue to her record of making “misleading statements” about the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy that separates children from their parents at the border.

On Sunday, Nielsen tweeted that the administration does “not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.” Harris said that for more than a year, she’s been asking for “complete data on the number of children separated and what training and protocol exists for carrying out such separations. In response, the leadership of the department has routinely failed to provide complete answers to questions from me and my colleagues.” The Department of Homeland Security “should have a commitment to transparency and accountability,” Harris continued, but under Nielsen, it “has a track record of neither.”

Several other Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Rep. Ted Lieu (Calif.), have also called on Nielsen to resign.

Why stop there?  John Kelly and Stephen Miller who devised the family-separation policy should also be forced to resign. They can continue to influence this white nationalist racist president from the outside, as Stephen Bannon does.

UPDATE: The Washington Post editorial board correctly notes The Trump administration created this awful border policy. It doesn’t need Congress to fix it.

[I]t is simply not correct, as Ms. Nielsen suggested Monday, that Congress must act before the crisis of families being separated can be solved. As Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C) said: “President Trump could stop this policy with a phone call . . . If you don’t like families being separated, you can tell [Homeland Security], ‘Stop doing it.’ ”

Instead, CNBC reports Trump told the National Federation of Independent Businesses’ 75th anniversary event in Washington today:

“We want to end the border crisis by finally giving us the legal authorities and the resources to detain and remove illegal immigrant families altogether and bring them back to their country.”

Trump has defined the GOP as the “mass deportation party.” His policies also oppose legal immigration.

“Now think of all that aid that we give to some of these countries,” he said. “Well, I’m going to go very shortly for authorization that when countries abuse us by sending their people up — not their best — we’re not going to give any more aid to those countries.”

This is a racist consumed by his hatred.

17 thoughts on “The Trump administration’s defense of the indefensible goes off the rails (updated)”

  1. ABC News Verified account
    @ABC

    Pres. Trump hugged an American flag at the conclusion of his remarks to the National Federation of Independent Business, during which he aggressively defended his administration’s immigration enforcement policies. https://abcn.ws/2JQ49X6
    11:02 AM – 19 Jun 2018

  2. Oh, I missed this. Deplorable Martha commented on Trump’s border crisis…

    McCain rips Trump’s family separation policy as an affront to American decency
    Published 7:53 p.m. MT June 18, 2018

    Late Monday, U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, a Republican whose Tucson-based district includes part of the border with Mexico, issued a statement that suggests she doesn’t like the separation tactics, but doesn’t find fault with the Trump administration.

    “We need to enforce our laws in a consistent and humane manner and (Homeland Security) should not have to choose between enforcing the law and keeping children with their parents,” she said. “My immigration bill, which I’ve been working on since last September, fixes this by allowing children to stay with their parents as they undergo due process. I hope we can get a version of my bill out of the House this week and on the President’s desk immediately to address many urgent issues like this.”

    https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2018/06/18/john-mccain-rips-trumps-family-separation-policy-affront-american/712611002/

  3. Can we now admit that “poor Melania” is a full partner in her husband’s trainwreck administration? Just as she supported his birther campaign?

    I try to ignore the First Golddigger Wife. But this comment posted yesterday is so stupid and so cruel that it deserves attention.

    So bye, girl. GTFOH. I hope you’ll be a prison wife soon.

    Melania Trump Verified account

    @FLOTUS

    A great visit with the King & Queen of Spain at the @WhiteHouse today. Queen Letizia & I enjoyed tea & time together focusing on the ways we can positively impact children.

    4:51 PM – 19 Jun 2018

    • Shaun King Verified account
      @ShaunKing

      My God. They are literally shipping the kids detained at the border all over the country.

      They are arriving via plane and being placed in random foster care centers and group homes in states as far as New York and Michigan.

      They are doing this JUST TO CREATE A CATASTROPHE

      7:51 AM – 20 Jun 2018

      @ShaunKing
      3m3 minutes ago

      Just confirmed that INFANTS have arrived in New York & Michigan after being forcefully taken from their parents at the southern born.

      INFANTS.

      @ShaunKing
      41s41 seconds ago

      BREAKING: Two infant boys just arrived in Michigan last night by plane after being forcefully taken by their parents at the Southern border.

      They are now thousands of miles away from their parents.

    • Aura Bogado Verified account
      @aurabogado
      3h3 hours ago

      If you thought cages were bad, I hate to break it to you: It gets much, much worse. Drunk employees. Sexual assault. The forced administration of heavy psychotropic drugs that leave children “hypnotized.” Our new investigation:

      Migrant children sent to shelters with histories of abuse allegations
      By Aura Bogado, Patrick Michels, Vanessa Swales and Edgar Walters / June 20, 2018

      https://www.revealnews.org/article/migrant-children-sent-to-shelters-with-histories-of-abuse-allegations/

  4. Donald J. Trump Verified account

    @realDonaldTrump

    Democrats are the problem. They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13. They can’t win on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters!

    6:52 AM – 19 Jun 2018

    • Ted Lieu Verified account

      @tedlieu

      Dear @realDonaldTrump: Like your grandfather, my parents infested America. As their son with yellow skin, I now get to vote against your harmful policies. And after you leave due to either losing reelection or impeachment, I will still be here reversing your shit.

      11:01 AM – 19 Jun 2018

      • My two favorite words? “Mic check”. 🙂

        https://twitter.com/SmashRacismDC/status/1009234229899792385

        DHS Secretary Nielsen thought she’d have a nice Mexican dinner.

        Yeah, at a Mexican restaurant.

        Nevermind that every restaurant in America has undocumented people working in the kitchen, she picked a freakin’ Mexican restaurant.

        We do not overlook evil because racist lady wants a taco.

        Mic check.

        • Wow. Looks like Cruella Deville Nielson might have to get take out for awhile.

          Well, I hope the miserable, cold-hearted, wretched woman was doubled over all night with gastric reflux.

  5. THIS.

    “John Kelly and Stephen Miller who devised the family-separation policy should also be forced to resign.”

    • I’m not without words, I just can’t write them here. So to quote the one who Martha adores, “Such a nasty woman”.

      • That ad is unavoidable on YouTube if you live in Phoenix. It’s racist and stupid to boot.

        Showing that MS-13 tattoo is shameful, because MS-13 was founded in America. We send our murderers and rapists to Mexico and South America, and then we get mad when some come back.

        BTW, there are only about 8000 MS-13 gang members in the US, there are high school football games in Texas that draw twice that many on a Friday night. MS-13 is bad, but we have much, much bigger problems.

        But the GOP likes to keep their followers scared by using boogeymen, and ISIS was getting stale.

        Building a wall won’t keep anyone out, or stop the flow of drugs into America. We can’t even keep drugs out of our prisons, and they have four walls, armed guards, can full cavity searches.

        40% of “illegal” immigrants are people who overstayed their visa, they did not cross the desert in the night. That’s millions of people, most of them working and paying taxes.

        Sending away asylum seekers is unChristian and unAmerican. You cannot read the bible and think otherwise, Romans 13 does not apply.

        The Pilgrims were running away from a church they disagreed with, and Jesus was a refugee in Egypt.

        If you want to stop people from coming here and “stealing our jobs”, then lock up the CEO’s of Tyson and Archer Daniels Midland and Marriot Hotels, because they knowingly employ millions of undocumented immigrants, and they get paid millions to do it.

        If you perp walk a billionaire or two, the jobs will dry up, and people will not come. Even better, get rid of corn subsidies in the US, make corn farmers earn a profit like every other business, and allow agriculture to return to Mexico, because our corn subsidies killed farms in Mexico, and drove people here.

        That would also mean that my tax dollars are no longer used to keep the price of soda down, so people won’t be able to afford poison and healthcare costs will go down. Win win.

        If you want to stop drugs from coming and end the cartels, decriminalize drugs and treat them like the medical issue they are. You take the profit out and the cartels dry up, you take drug abuse out of the criminal justice system and save billions a year, because it’s 90% cheaper to treat drug abuse than it is to lock someone up.

        But McSally isn’t bright enough to understand that her policies, if you can call them that, are the same failed policies that we’ve had since Nixon. Policies that break up families, destroy lives, and cost billions every year.

        She’s pandering to the worst in Arizona, she’s as racist as the rest of them, and her ad is so incredibly offensive, not just because of the racism implied, but because it hurts the brain to think anyone is that stupid.

        Goddammit, I can’t stand stupid, dishonest, racist politicians.

        • “…our corn subsidies killed farms in Mexico, and drove people here.”

          Yep. And increasing border militarization made it nearly impossible for undocumented immigrant workers to come and go, so they stayed and wanted their families to join them.

          There has been no political will to confront the sources of these problems when the law enforcement solution is just so much more lucrative (for some) and easier to talk about.

      • Here’s an ad that won’t make you feel like you need a shower after viewing. It will no doubt anger John Kavanagh, so, bonus.

        • Excellent.

          Makes you feel there could be light at the end of this tunnel that isn’t a freight train coming.

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