Moths to the flame
Trump’s lies get crazier by the day.
President Trump remained resistant on Monday in the face of growing public outcry over his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border, repeating the false assertion that Democrats were the ones to blame for it, and suggesting that criminals — not parents — were toting juveniles to the United States.
“They could be murderers and thieves and so much else,” Mr. Trump said of the people crossing the border, as he delivered somewhat incongruous remarks during a meeting of the National Space Council on Monday. “We want a safe country, and it starts with the borders, and that’s the way it is.”
“Somewhat incongruous”…aka batshit insane arbitrary off the wall off topic.
Not to mention the irony of a snakepit of crime like Trump pretending to think immigrants are mostly murderers. We do want a safe country: a country safe from the venom and hatred fomented by this pestilent angry baby.
In a series of tweets and speeches on Monday, Mr. Trump instead relied on fear to curry support for a “zero tolerance” policy that refers for criminal prosecution all immigrants apprehended crossing the border without authorization. The president used the threat of gang violence and other crime, and a change in the fabric of American culture as a means to stoke support among supporters and push Congress into figuring out a way to drum up funding for his long-promised border wall.
“Children are being used by some of the worst criminals on earth as a means to enter our country,” he wrote. “Has anyone been looking at the Crime taking place south of the border. It is historic, with some countries the most dangerous places in the world. Not going to happen in the U.S.”
Not joined-up thinking but just a series of furious barks. Crimnalz! CCCrime! South! Most dangerous!
Across the country, senior administration members echoed his message, equating a rise in border crossings with a rise in crime and suggesting that the people who were separated at the border were not families at all.
In a speech at a law enforcement conference in New Orleans on Monday, Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, piggybacked on the president’s claim, and said that between October and February, there was a 315 percent increase in the number of undocumented immigrants “fraudulently” using “unaccompanied alien children” to pose as a family unit in order to enter the United States.
They always say something like that. That’s the prelude to “ethnic cleansing” and genocide. There are always accusations and generalizations of that kind. It’s an excuse for herding, selecting, segregating, isolating, detaining, interning, and if nothing interrupts, killing. That’s the ticking bomb Kirstjen Nielsen is batting around.
The large percentage that Ms. Nielsen cited refers to a sliver of overall data: During that time frame, there were 191 cases of fraudulent family claims reported, up from 46 cases for all of 2017, when more than 303,000 crossing attempts were recorded. Still, Ms. Nielsen, who on Sunday said that the administration did not actually have a policy of separating families, held firm.
“We do not have the luxury of pretending that all individuals coming to this country as a family unit are in fact a family,” Ms. Nielsen said. “This administration has a simple message: If you cross the border illegally, we will prosecute you.”
It’s not a “luxury.”
We’re well on the way to becoming an outlaw pariah state like South Africa at this rate. It’s taken him only a year and a half to get this far.
In another tweet, Mr. Trump looked to Germany, one of America’s closest allies, to warn the public about what might happen if the policy [were] relaxed. The president falsely claimed that crime in Germany is on the rise, and railed against immigration policies in Europe
“The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition,” Mr. Trump wrote. “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!”
…
While Mr. Trump’s assessment of Germany’s crime problems is not accurate — crime in the country is the lowest since 1992, according to the most recent German data available — the brutal murder of a 14-year-old German girl has fueled Ms. Merkel’s opponents who are against the country’s migration policies that provide entry to some 10,000 asylum seekers each month.
Over the weekend, Mr. Trump spoke with Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister who is known for his anti-immigration rhetoric. Both men agreed that strong borders are needed, according to the White House.
It’s our heritage.
Approval of family disintegration and the detention camps is running some 30% or so in polls. The other 70% is heartening, but 30% is still much too much. We could use our culture changed, so that none of this was acceptable, so that officials told to do such things would simply refuse and we’d have the whole cabal impeached in days. It’s a rather large ask of immigrants, but certainly that 70% or so of us would appreciate that help.
I feel sick over what’s happening. The family separation is deliberate cruelty and too many people are enjoying the sadism. Anyone who supports this and still claims to be pro-life can fuck right off. Even if what was being said was true, that the kids were being used “fraudulently”, that would not justify keeping those children in concentration camps.
Looking at those camps at the weekend, I fear there will be deaths. From the heat, from malnutrition and without doubt, an outbreak of a communicable disease. An abandoned Walmart cannot possibly have the sanitation infrastructure in place to deal with so many humans in one place. A tent city? Even worse.
This is already a human rights crisis and if something isn’t done, it will be a public health crisis as well. Hell, there are occasionable outbreaks of cryptosporidium or similar waterborne infections at big festivals, and everyone there is camping voluntarily (i.e. they hopefully brought provisions) and only for a short period of time.
CHILDREN WILL DIE. And the Republicans will shed crocodile tears and continue to claim their hands are tied.
As long as they are not fetuses, Republicans don’t really seem to mind much if children die (especially if they are non-white).
Jeff Engel: Simply put, that 30% will ALWAYS support the Republican, no matter what they do. It’s astoundingly consistent–27% of voting Illinoisans thought that Alan Keyes would make a superior choice for Senator over Barack Obama. It’s pure tribalism, which isn’t going to be easily moved by changing the culture that promotes the attitude–you have to actually alter the culture that promotes tribalism, and that’s a harder thing to gut. And President Chickenshit Dumpsterfire, I’ll note, technically got about 30% of the registered American voters to check him off–and every analysis I’ve seen of the election notes that his supporters were zealots who showed up in record highs, while leftists and moderates showed up in record lows. So even there, one can see that there’s just something about that last 30%. We need a system that will isolate that minority, politically, instead of allowing them to dominate. But that’s going to require getting Dems in power who are serious about strengthening voting rights and anti-gerrymandering policies. (Sadly, right now, only the party out of power in any given state even criticizes the practice.)