Killing the Dream

Who’da thunk? Less than a month after promising Democrats he would fight to protect 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, President Trump is gumming up the works with a wish list of hard-line policy demands.

Turns out, the President who claimed to want a humane solution for so-called Dreamers really just wants to throw chum to his anti-immigrant base.

Nearly a month ago, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi emerged from a meeting with the President stating, for the record, that they had brokered a deal:

Trump would back legislation codifying the substance of President Barack Obama’s policy for those who came to this country as children in exchange for border security measures short of a wall.

Monday, the White House released a whole host of demands almost impossible for Democrats, and even many Republicans, to agree to.

Those include strict limits on how many people can immigrate into the country. Penalties on “sanctuary cities” — like New York — that resist arbitrary ICE demands to turn over otherwise lawabiding undocumented immigrants. And, yes, funding the border wall that remains a nonstarter to Democrats and plenty of Republicans.

All of which suggests, despite Trump’s claims to want to deal with Dreamers “with heart,” he’s far less interested in a solution than he is tending to sagging poll numbers among his hardest-core supporters.

Little wonder why. According to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, Trump’s approval rating in rural areas and small towns slipped to 47% last month — down from 55% in his first month. He took significant hits on his signature issue; satisfaction with his handling of immigration fell from 56 % in January to 47% in September.

Trump’s the one who chose to shred Obama’s executive order. He’s the one who owns the mess. But the self-styled apolitical problem-solver is behaving just like a craven pol. And getting set to betray nearly a million contributing members of society who know no other country as their home.