PREZ MUST PUT AN END TO SEPARATION
President Trump is clearly doing a bad job of marketing the whole “family separation” policy at the U.S. Mexican border, so maybe what he needs is a better name.
Something like the “Juvenile Referral Process.” Or the “Alien Transfer Exit Program.”
Both those programs, under the Obama administration, also resulted in illegal immigrant children being separated from their parents at the Mexican border. Yet they didn’t generate nearly the amount of outrage we’re now seeing from immigrant activists and Trump critics.
U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III and other Democratic lawmakers didn’t make grandstanding trips to the border when Obama was president to protest the handling of illegal immigrant children. Showboating “reporters” never went off on Obama’s press secretary to demand more humane treatment of children. Laura Bush didn’t write op-eds accusing Obama of being “immoral.”
But Trump is now under siege for his immigration policies because the president is a lightning rod and his administration apparently couldn’t figure out that announcing that targeting children as a “deterrent” policy to stop illegal immigration would not be a good idea.
Now Trump is facing a public relations disaster as the images of children in steel cages get 24-hour-a-day coverage on CNN.
And clearly Trump’s defense of his new immigration policy isn’t working.
The constant tweeting blaming Democrats isn’t going to work, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders blaming Democrats isn’t cutting it, either.
No one is buying Trump’s argument that there’s a “law” forcing him to separate children from their parents. Because there isn’t a specific law.
What Trump means is it’s the law to detain illegal immigrants, and of course no one wants to point that out.
So how does Trump get himself out of this PR jam?
Maybe he should divert attention from the policy by holding a historic first-time-ever summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
Oh, wait, he already did that. And got criticized for it.
How about a dramatic announcement launching something called the “Space Force.” Nah, tried that, too. Maybe he should lower unemployment to record levels. Or get the stock market to skyrocket. No, that wouldn’t work, either. Trump’s only way of turning around the negative press is to do something drastic. Change the policy. Now. Before something worse happens.
The president can no longer just play defense, because that’s not working. He needs to make a dramatic Oval Office announcement, saying children will no longer be separated from their parents, put in steel cages. That’s not humane, and not the way Americans act.
But in the same announcement, make clear he will not allow the Democrats to use the children as political pawns. Because that’s exactly what they’ve been doing.
Trump needs to rise above the political games, and confront the situation head on. If he doesn’t, he will be playing a dangerous political game. And come out the big loser.