Trump Discovers He's President: And Not a Very Good One

I THINK WE CAN ALL AGREE, liberal, conservative, independent, and brain-dead alike, that President Trump outdid himself today.

How so?

This afternoon, the Big Orange Buffoon reversed a policy which he has been insisting for weeks he had no power to reverse. 

He couldn’t end the policy separating children from parents along the border. And you couldn’t blame him for the weeping toddlers, either. 

It was all the Democrats’ fault. 

Those bastards! They made him rip thousands of children from the arms of their parents and send those children to holding camps.

He, Trump, hated to see it, or so he claimed. But what could he do? He was only the President of the United States, and not a very good president at that.

Split them up. That's the Trump plan.

*

TO UNDERSTAND TODAY’S NEWS we need to back up a few days, at least, and look at consider developments. We pick up the story here:

6/18/18: What’s would any Monday be without a stupid presidential tweet? Not content with separating parents and children on the U.S. border, Trump decides to dive into the immigration controversy in Europe.

Trump tweets:

The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!

Sadly, those pesky “fake news” folks at CNN do some “fake” checking of the “fake statistics” available from the “fake German Federal Ministry of the Interior.” According to the German police—who are probably just people dressed up in Halloween costumes and using “fake German accents,” crime was the lowest in Germany last year since 1992. The drop in crime from 2016 to 2017 was 5.1%.

Meanwhile, you had to wonder why Trump wasn’t focused on crime here at home. Hate crimes against Muslims in America rose 15% last year, the second year in a row marked by a steep rise. Anti-Semitic incidents reached all-time highs in 2017. The total number of school shootings (since 2009) reached 288 by May 21. This compared with two school shooting incidents in Canada, two in France, one in Germany and zero in Japan, Italy and the United Kingdom during the same years.

(Those are the other G7 nations.)  

I can’t find current murder rates for Germany—but the numbers for 2015 will suffice to bolster my point. In 2015 Germany had a murder rate of less than 0.9 per 100,000 people, down by almost a third in fifteen years. By comparison the murder rate in the United States was 5.3 per 100,000 in 2016, which was roughly half the rate during a stretch that began in the late 60s and continued into the early 90s.

The United States has also suffered several horrific mass shootings since Trump plunked down in the White House. None have been the work of immigrants. The Las Vegas shooter (58 killed) was home-grown. The Sutherland Springs, Texas killer was home-grown (26 dead). The killers who shot up Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (17 killed) and Santé Fe High School (10 more dead) were home-grown.

So building a wall along the Mexican border and sending toddlers to detention facilities might not solve our problem at all.

*

IN TERMS OF THE TUMULT regarding separation of children from parents on the border, I think it is clear the Trump administration is saying, “tomato,” and everyone with a brain is saying, “tomatho.”

In an interview with The New York Times last March, White House aide Stephen Miller was clear about the decision to start separating children from parents when families tried to enter the United States, illegally or when claiming asylum. “No nation,” he insisted, “can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement. It was a simple decision by the administration [emphasis added] to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period.

“The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”

So there it is. It was a simple decision—even to send kids to camps who aren’t old enough to talk—if like Miller, you have no more morals than a weasel.

In fact, you had to wonder if what Miller really wanted to say wasn’t something like this: “All you brown and black people fleeing dangerous conditions in Central America and coming to America’s doorstep should turn around and go back. Because frankly, the Statue of Liberty is a useless pile of green copper and we don’t want your kind.” Your tired, your poor, your huddled masses—the same kind of people, including Russian Jews fleeing persecution, who first planted Miller’s family on our shores and brought us Friedrich Trump in 1885—you could all go kiss off.

Go away!

A MONTH LATER, Attorney General Jeff Sessions followed up Miller’s statement by announcing a new policy of breaking up families. “If you don’t like that,” he said, “then don’t smuggle children over our border.”

Sessions, of course, famously quoted the Bible to justify this new zero-tolerance policy, which the Department of Justice announced and labeled as a “new zero-tolerance policy” on its website on April 6.

As for the Bible, backing him up, Mr. Sessions claimed:

Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution...I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes. Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves...and protect the weak and it protects the lawful.

Naturally, when asked about the Attorney General’s comments on June 14, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders doubled down.

“I can say that it’s very biblical to enforce the law. It’s repeated many times throughout the Bible,” she said.

BARRAGED BY QUESTIONS FROM REPORTERS—who apparently wanted to express “fake outrage” at the separation of “fake little children” from “fake parents,” Sanders first insulted a CNN reporter for failing to understand short sentences. Then she clinched her place in the Propaganda Hall of Fame by arguing, “It’s a moral policy to enforce the law.”

Clearly, neither Sessions nor Sanders was anxious to provide an context for their “hey-it’s-in-the-Bible” defense. For example, there was a time when “the divine right of kings” was accepted by all the crowned heads in Christendom—because it was established by the same biblical text Sessions had cited, Romans 13:1. In the same way, our colonial fore bearers cited the Bible (Leviticus 20:27) when they tortured and hanged witches in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. 

The Bible also clearly accepts the right to own slaves, as in Exodus 21 and Leviticus 25:44-46:

 Thy bond-men and thy bond-maids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you: of them shall ye buy bond-men and bond-maids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land. And they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession, they shall be your bond-man forever.

Those verses were routinely noted by Southern defenders of slavery in the years leading up to the American Civil War.

It might even be fun if Sanders, who considers herself a Christian, would cite Leviticus 20:10 from the podium someday. That verse makes adultery punishable by death, and subsequent verses make it clear that a really cool method of dispatching sinners involves pounding them with stones.

So Sanders might just as readily call on reporters to gather on the South Lawn, pockets filled with rocks, to await the next appearance of President Trump.

As for this separation of children and parents—which even Trump says he hates—there seems to be confusion about who should get the blame. For some odd reason—probably moral cowardice—Trump himself continues to insist this policy is all the fault of the Democrats. This he insists despite the fact: A) Democrats don’t control the White House; B) Democrats don’t control either house of Congress; C) Democrats have not appointed any of the agency heads so happy to carry out this draconian policy.

YOU CAN ARGUE THAT THE POLICY is necessary, if you want. But you can’t eat your cake and then deny you ate it when you have a dab of frosting on your left cheek and crumbs down the front of your shirt.

This is good right-wing, immigrant-hating (in a large degree because they aren’t white enough) policy.

Own it, President Trump. Your boy Miller came up with the idea. Your boy Sessions announced it as new Department of Justice policy. Your press secretary said the Bible condones it. So don’t blame Democrats if you look cruel and heartless.

Because…well…you are.

No ♥.

6/19/18:  The heat intensifies as protest against the policy of separating children from parents grows.

“But if you can’t take the heat,” as Donald J. Trump likes to say, “get out of the kitchen and go tweet and blame Democrats.”

The president and his defenders insist they hate doing this. But what choice does Trump have? He’s only the President of the United States. The only powers he has under the Constitution are to enforce the laws any way he sees fit and direct the executive branch to carry out whatever policies he’s pushing on any given day. It’s very sad, he moans, this “Democratic law”—which no one can actually find on the books—which he is forced to carry out. It’s not his fault, he insists. And insists.

And insists!

Or, we might more accurately put it this way: The President of the United States lies and lies and lies.

IT’S NOT HARD TO REBUT the president’s argument—and you can do it using the comments of Republican lawmakers. 

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine tells reporters that separation of children is unnecessary—and it does not require Congressional action to end the practice. “The fact is the administration has the authority to fix this immediately without legislation.” 

Collins scoffs when asked about Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Nielsen’s claim that the administration has no choice but to enforce the law exactly as written. “That is not the case,” Collins says. “Otherwise, how could the two previous administrations have rejected this approach? 

“That’s amazing that she said that.”

Sen. Lindsay Graham isn’t mincing words. “President Trump could stop this policy with a phone call,” he says. “I’ll go tell him: If you don’t like families being separated, you can tell DHS, ‘Stop doing it.’”

Of course, if you watch Fox News, you hear what a great policy this is—which I think is proof that watching Fox News makes you measurably stupider.

Laura Ingraham says the holding facilities the children are being sent to are just like summer camp.

In a rare moment of levity considering the seriousness of the discussion, one writer calls this the moment Ingraham’s soul left her body.

Tucker Carlson says the kids in these camps, even those in diapers, are better off with air conditioning and comfy beds than in their impoverished, war-torn, crime-ridden homelands. And he, for one, can’t imagine why anyone would let any of these people enter our country for a chance at a better life.

As for Trump’s critics, Carlson wipes them out (in his mind and the increasingly-damaged minds of viewers), saying, “You think any of these people really care about family separation? ... No matter what they tell you, this is not about helping children. Their goal is to change your country forever [emphasis added]—and they are succeeding, by the way.”

(I think he wants to say, as one Republican lawmaker did earlier this month, that too many brown and black people are crossing our border and soon there won’t be enough white people left to go around.)

Carlson soon flies off the rails completely. The people who criticize Trump don’t care about the collapse of the American family.“They welcome that collapse,” he claims, “because strong families are an impediment to their political power.” Liberals don’t care about single families in America or fixing the foster care system—a claim that seems odd since liberals consistently argue that we should raise taxes to improve foster care and bolster children’s services—and people like Carlson rant and rave in response about “big government” and killing billionaires with more taxation. Carlson wraps up a lame defense of a truly shitty policy by claiming Trump’s critics are hypocrites. “They care far more about foreigners than about their own people,” 

SO LET’S LOOK AT WHO doesn’t like this policy. 

And it is a policy. 

It’s not law. 

The First Lady, who managed to gain entry to this country some years back because we were experiencing a crippling shortage of slender models, is opposed. 

Her spokeswoman issues a statement: “Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform. She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart.”

Yes! We need to enforce all laws! 

Someone should tell her husband because he wants to pardon every man, woman and child who might have plead guilty in the Russia investigation.

The four former living First Ladies do not support the president. Okay, Hillary, you figure is a given. Rosalynn Carter, however, recalls Cambodians fleeing a murderous communist regime in the 70s, including many individuals who helped U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. She’s blunt:

When I was first lady, I worked to call attention to the plight of refugees fleeing Cambodia for Thailand. I visited Thailand and witnessed firsthand the trauma of parents and children separated by circumstance beyond their control. The practice and policy today of removing children from their parents’ care at our border with Mexico is disgraceful and a shame to our country.

(All emphasis below was added unless otherwise noted.)

And you have to credit Mrs. Clinton, for using the Bible to blast Attorney General Sessions’ claim that the Bible somehow justified his policy. She calls what’s happening along the border a “humanitarian crisis.”

“Those who selectively use the Bible to justify this cruelty are ignoring a central tenet of Christianity. Jesus said ‘Suffer the little children unto me.’ He did not say ‘let the children suffer.’”

Laura Bush, now apparently a member of the “Deep State,” compares Trump policy to treatment of Japanese-Americans who were locked up in 1942. If you don't recall the history, 110,000 people, including 77,000 U.S. citizens were placed in detention camps, despite having taken no part in the attacks on Pearl Harbor. “I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries,” Mrs. Bush says, “but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.”

Mrs. Obama avoids any direct attack on the president—because unlike the president she has real class. She merely re-tweets Laura Bush’s statement with the comment, “Sometimes truth transcends policy.”

As more and more people weigh in on events along the border, Trump administration defenses begin to crumble.

CBS NEWS—WHICH MUST now be part of the giant “fake news” conspiracy aligned against the president—has the dastardly nerve to quote a bunch of leading Republicans who think the policy is an abomination.

“The way it’s being handled right now isn’t acceptable,” says Senator Orrin Hatch. “It’s not American.”

Hatch is then joined by a dozen Republican senators who fire off a letter to Mr. Sessions. Apparently, they believe the separations can be halted immediately because they have read the U.S. Constitution: “We support the administration’s efforts to enforce our immigration laws, but we cannot support implementation of a policy that results in the categorical forced separation of minor children from their parent.”

“All of us who are seeing images of children being pulled away from moms and dads in tears were horrified,” Sen. Ted Cruz tells reporters. “This has to stop.” Cruz proposes adding 375 immigration judges to speed up the processing of immigrants filing for asylum.

Naturally, President Paranoia shoots that idea down at once. Speaking to a gathering of small business owners, Trump says he doesn’t like it because some of the lawyers who represented the immigrants would be “bad people.”

And who knows better how to pick great lawyers than Trump!

Besides, all those judges (and, of course, Trump has to inflate the number slightly) might be corrupt:

“They said, ‘Sir, we’d like to hire about five or six thousand more judges,’” Mr. Trump claims in a rambling speech to the National Federation of Independent Business. “Five or six thousand? Now, can you imagine the graft that must take place? You’re all small-business owners, so I know you can’t imagine a thing like that would happen.”

As a liberal, I’m having trouble imagining how Trump took 375 and turned it into 5,000-6,000.

ANYWAY—AND WITH ONLY A HANDFUL of exceptions we are not quoting Democrats—the chorus of condemnation builds:

“I firmly detest the heartless and inhumane practice of separating children from their parents at the border,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pennsylvania, says in a statement. “This extreme measure must end. It is an ineffective deterrent against illegal immigration, and children should not have to face traumatic ordeals given the actions of their parents.” 

CNN—always “fake news” according to President Trump—keeps “fake quoting” Republicans who oppose his policy.

Again: It’s policy. 

It’s not law.

In a Facebook post, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse defends administration efforts to tighten immigration enforcement. Still, he says, separating families is “wrong” and “the choice before the American people does not have to be ‘wicked versus foolish.’ This is wrong. Americans do not take children hostage, period,’” he wrote.

Rep. Will Hurd, a Florida Republican, speaks out against the policy and notes that it “is clearly something that the administration can change.” “They don't need legislation to change it,” he adds.

Hurd tells a CNN reporter we shouldn’t try to use a Fourth Century solution (a 30-foot high wall), and that solution the most expensive alternative of all, to solve a Twenty-First Century problem.

Florida Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart issues a statement calling the separations “unconscionable.”

“It is totally unacceptable, for any reason, to purposely separate minor children from their parents,” he says. “We cannot allow for this to continue happening, and it must stop.”

Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts renounces the practice via Twitter: “While I firmly support enforcing our immigration laws, I am against using parental separation as a deterrent to illegal immigration. 

“My concern, first and foremost, is the protection of the children.”

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski says the policy is “not consistent with our values.” “The time is now for the White House to end the cruel, tragic separations of families….The thousands of children taken from their parents and families must be reunited as quickly as possible and be treated humanely while immigration proceedings are pending. I am troubled that those seeking asylum are being turned away before they even have the opportunity to file their papers."

Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, also addresses the border situation in a Facebook post. “As a father, I know firsthand that there is nothing more important than family, and I understand why kids need to be with their parents,” he writes. “That’s why I have publicly come out against separating children from their parents at the border.”

Even Anthony Scaramucci adds his condemnation: “It’s inhumane. It’s offensive to the average American.”

Former C.I.A. Director Michael Hayden tweets a picture of Auschwitz:

“Let’s run the clock back to 1933, which is really what I was trying to address,” Hayden explains in an interview on CNN. “And in 1933, what did we see in Germany? A cult of personality, a cult of nationalism, a cult of grievance, a press operation that looked like and was the ministry of propaganda and then the punishing of marginalized groups.”

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush adds his voice: “Children shouldn’t be used as a negotiating tool. @realDonaldTrump should end this heartless policy and Congress should get an immigration deal done that provides for asylum reform, border security and a path to citizenship for Dreamers.”

The United Nations office of human rights has already called the policy “a serious violation of the rights of the child.”

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION takes care of that complaint Wednesday by withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council.

6/20/18: The list of organizations and individuals offering blistering criticism of administration policy regarding breaking up families along the southern border grows. 

That list now includes:

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the Conference says in a statement, “Separating babies from their mothers is not the answer and is immoral.”

Pope Francis

Sen. John McCain
Ivanka Trump (the president admitted as much)

Michael D. Cohen (yes, the president’s lawyer!) He writes: “As the son of a Polish Holocaust survivor, the images and sounds of this family separation policy [are] heart-wrenching,” he writes. “While I strongly support measures that will secure our porous borders, children should never be used as bargaining chips.”

The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (this group advocates for children with disabilities)

Ana Mari Cauce, president of the University of Washington

Jennifer Silvers, assistant professor of developmental neuroscience at UCLA: Silvers and co-author Jaana Juvonen pen an editorial calling for a change in policy to protect the children. Silvers notes:

I’ve been tweeted at and been called un-American. It is really just a knee-jerk, automatic response to hearing anything about immigration [that] seems to really get people riled up to a point where it’s difficult to have a conversation. It wasn’t our intention to create something highly political. We just felt compelled, as scientists and mothers, by what we know from the data and from our own personal experiences, which is that parents and their children belong together, period.

Jaana Juvonen, a professor of developmental psychology at UCLA: Juvonen, an immigrant from Finland who earned American citizenship a few years ago, explained in their joint editorial, “It is our duty to speak up. If we, as scientists or even as students, are privy to this knowledge and science, if we don’t convey what is known, who’s in the position then to challenge the new policies? What’s the weight of science?”

Rev. John I. Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame\

The head of the University of California

The superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME): This union represents 1.6 million government workers. An AFSCME statement reads in part:

[Our] members make caring for families and communities their life’s work. From social workers to nurses to school bus drivers to first responders, public service workers do not choose their profession just to support their own families, but to keep all children and families healthy and safe. 

...This inhumane policy is a cruel choice that does not make us safer, and it does not make us great. There is no law that mandates traumatizing children, only the prerogative of this president.

The American Nurses Association: A letter from the nurses’ organization offers adamant opposition:

  

The Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements (ANA, 2015) calls on all nurses to always act to preserve the human rights of vulnerable groups such as children, women and refugees.  The United States of America is better than this.  We cannot continue with a policy that is so immoral and cruel to children and families.

National Nurses Organizing Committee-Texas, an affiliate of National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional association of RNs, which represents 1,700 RNs in four El Paso hospitals, issues the following statement:

As the nurses of El Paso who care for the border community in the middle of Chihuahuan desert we wish to express our outrage and horror that the U.S. government is preparing for children to be separated from their parents and housed in tents in the middle of Fort Bliss.

Fort Bliss is a desert military base that is larger than the state of Rhode Island and inaccessible to the general public and to local services including healthcare, education and community. In the summer temperatures routinely exceed 108 degrees. There is no water in this harsh arid landscape; there are not even trees for shade.

A Honduran mother removes her child's shoelaces, as required by Border Patrol rules.
They'll be split up soon.

15,000 mental health professionals who signed a letter addressed to leading members of the Trump administration:

We would like you to remember what it feels like to be a child. To take a moment and remember how big and sometimes scary the world felt and how, if you were lucky, the adults in your life represented security and safety. We want you to remember what little say you had over what you did and what happened to you and that even though this was frustrating, some part of you trusted that your parents knew what was best for you. And that your physical and psychological survival depended on them.

[Starting in October 2017…children four years of age and under were being separated at the border] These children are thrust into detention centers often without an advocate or an attorney and possibly even without the presence of any adult who can speak their language. We want you to imagine for a moment what this might be like for a child: to flee the place you have called home because it is not safe to stay and then embark on a dangerous journey to an unknown destination, only to be ripped apart from your sole sense of security with no understanding of what just happened or if you will ever see your family again. And that the only thing you have done to deserve this, is to do what children do: stay close to the adults in their lives for security.

3,000 academics (signatories to a letter calling for the administration to end the separation policy). 

American College of Physicians

The American Psychiatric Association:

As physician experts in mental health, the American Psychiatric Association opposes any policy that separates children from their parents at the United States border. Children depend on their parents for safety and support…. These children deserve our protection and should remain with their families as they seek asylum.

Also criticizing Trump policy:

The Council of Great City Schools 

Dr. Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics: Craft expresses horror after visiting one of the holding centers at the border and seeing a little girl weeping. “I’ve never been in this situation where I’ve felt so needlessly helpless,” she says during an interview on CNN. “This is something that was inflicted on this child by the government, and really is nothing less than government-sanctioned child abuse.”

The American Medical Association: Today the AMA blasted current policy:

Families seeking refuge in the U.S. already endure emotional and physical stress, which is only exacerbated when they are separated from one another. It is well known that childhood trauma and adverse childhood experiences created by inhumane treatment often create negative health impacts that can last an individual’s entire lifespan.

FAITH LEADERS have also spoken out:

Franklin Graham: “It’s disgraceful, and it’s terrible to see families ripped apart and I don’t support that one bit.”

Tony Suarez, a Latino pastor who has informally advised Trump, tweets, “God have mercy on those who seem so nonchalant to the plight of children being separated from their parents.”

Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism: Pesner calls the Trump policy “unconscionable,” saying, “Those at the highest levels of the Trump administration are responsible and must provide the public a clear explanation of how this happened and how these families will be reunited.”

A coalition of 26 Jewish groups: The Times of Israel notes that these Jewish groups—made up of those who remember well the dangers of sending families to camps—joined the call for an end to the policy. Signers include leaders of all major Jewish religious movements, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist

 “This policy undermines the values of our nation and jeopardizes the safety and well-being of thousands of people,” the letter they sent to administration officials says. “As Jews, we understand the plight of being an immigrant fleeing violence and oppression. We believe that the United States is a nation of immigrants and how we treat the stranger reflects on the moral values and ideals of this nation.”

The U.S. Episcopal Church (joined by faith groups listed below)

Presbyterian Church (USA)

Evangelical Lutheran Church of America

Islamic Society of North America

United Methodist Church

Their joint statement reads:

We affirm the family as a foundational societal structure to support human community and understand the household as an estate blessed by God. The security of the family provides critical mental, physical and emotional support to the development and well-being of children.

We pray for the children and families that will suffer due to this policy and urge the Administration to stop their policy of separating families.

The Business Roundtable: This lobbying group includes the CEOs of Walmart, General Motors, Boeing and Mastercard. Their statement lines up with the statements of countless other groups: “This practice is cruel and contrary to American values.” 

A bipartisan group of 75 former U.S. attorneys: Their statement reads:

Like a majority of Americans, we are appalled that your Zero Tolerance policy has resulted in the unnecessary trauma and suffering of innocent children. But as former United States Attorneys, we also emphasize that the Zero Tolerance policy is a radical departure from previous Justice Department policy, and that it is dangerous, expensive, and inconsistent with the values of the institution in which we served.

ABC ADDS TO THE LIST:

Russell Moore, President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention

National Association of Evangelicals

Council for Christian Colleges and Universities

National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference

The letter these and other religious groups sent to the president reads in part: “As evangelical Christians guided by the Bible, one of our core convictions is that God has established the family as the fundamental building block of society. The state should separate families only in the rarest of instances.”

“Not every individual arriving will merit asylum protection,” the letter notes, “but we would ask that families be kept together while ensuring each individual asylum seeker is afforded due process according to our laws.

“We are also concerned that there are fewer legal possibilities for those with a well-founded fear of persecution to be considered for refugee status without needing to make it to the U.S. border.”

*

SO LET’S SUMMARIZE.

First, President Trump insisted for weeks that he could do nothing about the laws. His administration had to separate parents and children.

Second, you couldn’t blame him. It was all the Democrat’s fault.

Third, his top aide, Stephen Miller, and his Attorney General, and his Homeland Security Secretary and his press secretary all said the policy was necessary and the children were being treated great, and so, no big deal!

The fraudsters who pose as journalists at Fox News insisted Trump was exactly right to do what he was doing, and none of his critics cared about children, not even members of the religious and medical groups listed above.

Then the heat grew too hot even for Donald J. Trump—we are talking “smoking Melania” hot or maybe “smoking porn queen” hot. There was talk of “Babies Incarcerated.”  Reporters described the holding facilities they visited as, “Gitmos for kids.” Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen got shouted out of a Mexican restaurant in D.C. by a group of protesters. “If kids don't eat in peace, you don't eat in peace,” they chanted. Four major airlines announced a boycott, saying they would no longer fly children who the Trump administration was separating from parents. Suddenly, the President of the United States, who had been lying all week about what he could and could not do, did what critics had been insisting he had the power to do from the start.

“We’re going to keep families together, but we still have to maintain toughness or our country will be overrun by people, by crime, by all of the things that we don’t stand for and that we don’t want,” he now said.

“If you’re weak, you’re pathetically weak, your country’s going to be overrun with people,” he added. He scoffed at the idea that some were saying he confused being strong with having no heart. 

“I’d rather be strong,” he said.

Then he reached for his presidential crayon box, grabbed his favorite crayon (white), and signed an executive order to end the practice his administration instituted and he had been insisting all along he alone could not end.

No telling how the folks at Fox will spin the news tonight. Probably, they’ll revert to talking about Hillary’s emails.

Don't they feel stupid!