Let’s face it: Donald Trump enjoys hurting and humiliating people, and that’s the thing some of his loudest supporters like about him. Making women and children cry makes him feel manly and powerful. The more defenseless, the better. He particularly enjoys punishing racial minorities.
See, when his victims have no ability to respond, Trump can mouth off without hiding behind bodyguards, as he’s done all his life. The way he did with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — calling the leader of America’s closest ally “weak” before beating an early retreat on Air Force One.
No way would he talk that way to the younger man’s face. Trump only bullies people he has power over.
This president’s incessant lying is yet another expression of his sadism—playing people for fools, making them grovel. Does anybody, anybody, actually believe that the heartbreaking result of the White House’s “zero tolerance” policy of tearing children from their mothers’ arms at the U.S./Mexican border is the fault of the Democrats?
The Democrats who control neither the White House, the Senate, nor the House of Representatives and have no power even to bring an immigration bill to a vote, much less pass one? Those Democrats?
“Democrats are the problem,” Trump tweeted. “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!”
In the next breath, Trump asserts that he’s holding the immigrant children hostage until Congress gives him his ridiculous wall—the wall Mexico was supposed to pay for.
So who are you going to believe, Trump supporters? Him or your lying eyes? The president could stop this obscene charade exactly the way he started it last April, with an executive order. It’s purely up to him and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“The White House can fix it if they want to,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) said. “I don’t think there’s any question about that.”
For the White House to pretend otherwise isn’t an exaggeration, a misunderstanding, or a falsehood. It’s a sheer, brazen, indefensible lie, suggestive of Trump’s contempt for his own supporters. He knows that as long as he’s sticking it to black or brown people and antagonizing “elitists” like me, they’ll believe—or pretend to believe, anyway—damn near anything.
The president says asylum-seeking refugees from Central America “infest” our country. He says they “could be murderers and thieves.” Such as that wailing little three year-old from Honduras in John Moore’s widely-circulated photo, snatched away from her mother by Border Patrol agents.
A stone killer, I am sure.
“They look so innocent. They’re not innocent,” Trump has said about “alien minors.” He’s been telling aides that the media cherry-picks images of sorrowful children to make him look bad.
See, that’s another aspect of the president’s personality: He’s incapable of admitting error or taking responsibility. He’s always right, and somebody else is always to blame. Every single time.
Meanwhile, have you heard the ProPublica audio of weeping children, crying out for their parents?
Give it a listen, Trump fans. Then get back to work on those emails suggesting that I leave the country or kill myself.
Former first lady Laura Bush, bless her, may have said it simplest and best: “I live in a border state,” she wrote in TheWashington Post. “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.”
GOP Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) worries about what this ugly debacle is doing to America’s place in the world: “The administration’s current family separation policy is an affront to the decency of the American people, and contrary to principles and values upon which our nation was founded. The administration has the power to rescind this policy. It should do so now.”
America’s allies and friends, see, are beginning to wonder if maybe the Trump presidency isn’t some awful freak political error. Maybe this is who we really are.
If the president gets his way, we could find out as early as November. Supposedly, Trump’s advisors have persuaded him that kidnapping immigrant children is a winning issue. One White House insider told the Washington Post that “if we’re having an argument on immigration, we always win because that’s our ground, no matter what the nuances of the argument are.”
Supposedly Trump also told GOP Senators that unless he gets everything he wants on immigration he’ll shut the government down come September—a barefaced case of extortion against our democracy. Polls suggest that this would be a political blunder of generational proportions, but who could put it past him?
Could be we’re fixing to find out just how many stone Trump cultists there are, and exactly how far they’re willing to go.
