Let's put this out there at the top - what's happening at the United States' southern border is a crisis. We're not going to debate semantics, however, it's a crisis that has been accentuated and exacerbated sharply by the president. Kasie Hunt explained that the president when faced with either policy or politics, Mr. Trump opts for the latter, meaning he is less interested in fixing problems than in using them to his political advantage. This is something that David Brooks called performative narcissism.
This brings us to Chuck Todd's interview with White House advisor Kellyanne Conway in which he challenged her on the fact that she was presenting proposals to fix immigration that the president is, frankly, loathe to utter. Closing the border, getting rid of judges and cutting off aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are not policy prescriptions that will solve the problem, but only serve to bolster the president in the eyes of his political base. If anything, on all three of the aforementioned rhetorical pieces, if you want to solve the problem, you need to go in the opposite direction. Keep the border open, hire more judges and hearing officers as Governor Jay Inslee (D-WA) suggested and provide more resources to the Northern Triangle countries. On the last of which, not only should the U.S. up its aid to those countries but make it conditional on allowing more U.S. advisors in country to help combat the problem.
Ms. Conway, denied by Mr. Todd her usual verbal filibustering by being forced to stay on topic, sounded as if the administration wants to work with Democrats but the fact is that the president has no inclination to do so. Why? Because the president needs the issue of immigration for the 2020 election so that he can continue charging up his base support.
Conversely, Mr. Todd put forth the notion that Democrats in Congress don't know where their base is on immigration so we'll try to provide an answer here. First, let's just say that Democrats are not for open borders, but also they are not for the inhumane treatment of people at the southern border. The zero-tolerance policy that the administration put in place caused family separations, permanently traumatizing thousands of children. It makes more sense to put more administrative resources on the border to speed up the hearing backlog, create a path to citizenship for dreamers devoid of political quid pro quo and employ better technologies along the border to combat illegal crossings and drugs from flowing in. Obviously, bipartisan immigration reform is needed and the Gang of Eight in the Senate did come up with it, but the Republicans in the House had killed it so now we have to start all over when in reality that bill should be dusted off and put on the table again. Having no illusions, the president would indeed veto it. It's difficult not to agree with Eugene Robinson generally and he explained that the United States is the wealthiest most powerful nation in the world so we do have the resources and we should be able to fix this. However, again, the president has no interest in fixing the problem. Instead, he wants to weaponize, to use Mr. Inslee's term, the situation and punish Democrats by shipping illegal immigrants to sanctuary cities, which by the way is illegal.
Suffice to say that we agree with Danielle Pletka's use of the word 'crisis' when it comes to the southern border, but we also agree with her use of the word when it comes to the president and what she sees at a turning point this week inasmuch as the widening chasm between the president's rhetoric/ actions and proper governance. She explained that the president's staff is struggling to keep my with Mr. Trump's off-the-cuff proposals that have no constitutional basis and a proper response to them. She is having a difficult time seeing how this can last for another year and a half.
But when you consider that Mr. Trump has indeed found his Roy Cohn, a former mob lawyer, in the person of William Barr, well then he's going to say and do whatever he wants. Mr. Barr in his so far in his second stint as Attorney General has protected Mr. Trump at every turn, Kasie Hunt's assessment that the Democrats' trust in him is basically nil is an easy call. Mr. Barr chooses his words carefully so when he said that he thought there was 'spying' on the Trump campaign by his own Justice Department, he knew Mr. Trump would use that to attack his critics. Mr. Barr, it seems right now, will give cover to Mr. Trump no matter what he does and says.
Panel: Kasie Hunt, NBC; Danielle Pletka, American Enterprise Institute; Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post; David Brooks, The New York Times
One more thing...
The president this week said that 'I know nothing about Wikileaks, it's not my thing... It's not my deal in life." Really? Talk about BS... He mentioned Wikileaks over 150 times on the campaign, holding up papers on campaign stops. Exasperating...
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