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This Is Not About Democrats. Or Republicans. And Definitely Not About Kathy Griffin. It's About Trump

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | June 18, 2018

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Here is the Secretary of Homeland Security, yesterday:

“We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.”

Here she is a month ago on NPR:

I mean, that would be like saying that when people commit crimes in this country, and they’re put in jail and separated from their family, that somehow that’s terror. In the United States we call that law enforcement. We call that protecting our communities and our children. That’s what we’re doing.

But separating families isn’t — it’s an extreme measure.

Well it’s not. Again, we do it every day in every part of the country. If you have a family and you commit a crime, the police do not not put you in jail because you have a family. They prosecute you and they incarcerate you. Illegal aliens should not get just different rights because they happen to be illegal aliens.

In case it’s not obvious to you, the difference between arresting a parent and putting that parent in prison in the United States is that the child can remain with another parent, a grandparent, a friend, or a neighbor, or — at worst — be put into the system and end up in a foster family.

If you’re separated from your family at the border, you have no one. You are alone. You are surrounded by people who do may not know the language. You are put in a cage. Oh, sorry! I mean, a wall made out of chain-link fence:

This policy was devised by Stephen Miller.

“It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”

It has been defended by Jeff Sessions:

“If you cross this border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. It’s that simple. If you smuggle illegal aliens across our border, then we will prosecute you. If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”

As well as Sarah Huckabee Sanders:

“I can say that it is very biblical to enforce the law. That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible.”

Trump, however, will not defend it. He blames the Democrats for a policy instituted by his own administration.

His wife seems to blame both Democrats and Republicans (instead of the White House, which is actually to blame).

“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 a heart.”

To be clear, Donald Trump has an endgame here.

Trump believes he can hold these children — 2000 of whom have been separated from their parents in the last six weeks — as hostages, as leverage to extract from the Democrats funding for The Wall. The gambit is not working for Trump, and the public is turning against him over this issue. Fifty-six percent of the country disagrees with the policy, compared to only 27 percent who agree, and it’s still early yet. Laura Bush came out with her own statement last night:

“I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.”

Trump will likely cave on this policy. He’ll be confronted by the issue tomorrow in a meeting with House Republicans, and the public will be confronted with more images like these:

They are literally taking shoelaces away from 2-year-olds.

But here’s the deal: When Trump finally caves and changes this policy, he’s going to try and claim to be the hero, the savior to these children. He’s going to argue that he and the Republicans fought off the Democrats in order to reverse this policy. His supporters — the 27 percent of Americans who believe separating children from their families is OK — will hail Trump as a savior to these children, as the only person willing to stand up to Obama’s inhumane laws.

In the meantime, Trump and his supporters are going to try and distract the media by doing exactly what they did with Samantha Bee. While children are being stripped from their mothers, they’re going to ignore the depravity of the policy and focus on the bad words.

Ignore those people. Don’t even try to defend Kathy Griffin, because then they’ve won, because then they’ve changed the subject, they’ve made it about her, instead of about this:

Resist.

Sign up here. Protests will be taking place around the country on June 30th.



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