Facing growing outrage over the news widely disseminated yesterday about the plight of the nearly 1,500 children whom the government has lost track of after ripping them away from their immigrant parents at the border, President Trump did what he typically does when faced with a horrible situation resulting from policies that he himself instituted: shirk responsibility and blame the Democrats for his own reprehensible actions.
The president took to Twitter to spread his latest batch of lies.
Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2018
Let’s get the trademarked grammatical errors out of the way before delving into the content of the tweet.
While we now know that White House communications staffers who sometimes commandeer Trump’s account to compose tweets on his behalf are imitating his misspellings and mangling of the lexicon to appear authentic, there is no excuse for using “there” instead of the possessive “their” in front of the word parents.
With that out of the way, it might be useful to remind the president that he and his party control both the legislative branch of government that makes the laws and the executive branch that enforces them. There’s no need to “put pressure on” Democrats to end any laws that separate children from their parents. If Republicans weren’t explicitly in favor of Trump’s immigration crackdown, they would end it and they haven’t done a thing to try.
It’s the second half of the tweet that explains why Trump’s rant against the very concept of immigration is the foundation of his political appeal to his base of aggrieved working-class whites who have been suckered by the 1% who control America’s wealth into blaming immigrants rather than the oligarch’s greed for their floundering fortunes.
Trump’s shift from blaming Democrats for his own heinous deportation policies that separate families at the border to his fear mongering blame of them for “PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS” demonstrates both the deep incoherence of his logic as well as the hypocritical media manipulation that may be his only talent.
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