Traumatizing children

this week.

Maybe it’s a good thing that talking about human rights abuses wasn’t high on the to-do list of last week’s U.S-North Korea summit.

Because the supposed leader of the free world can’t lecture dictators about right and wrong when he’s traumatizing children back home.

Separating scared kids from their parents and putting them in cages sounds like something that would happen in North Korea. Instead it’s the new U.S. policy of a president willing to terrify children to get his way on immigration.

We shouldn’t really be surprised that President Donald Trump would stoop this low. He got elected demonizing immigrants – those from south of the border as well as any country that seemed too Muslimy for him.

From the moment Trump took his campaign-kickoff ride down the Trump Tower escalator, he’s been calling for a wall to stop invading hordes he contends will steal our jobs, sell us drugs and rape our women.

Now Trump is willing to tear apart immigrant families to scare others away from coming here. He may even be betting that the heartbreaking spectacle pressures Congress to build his wall – the one Mexico was supposed to pay for.

And in true Trump fashion, he responds to criticism over children crying for their families by blaming past presidents and even Democrats.

Trump expects us to forget that this cruel approach to border policy started under his watch. And to forget that it is Trump’s Republican Party that controls both houses of Congress and could change any law he blames for the problem.

Thankfully there is outrage coming from the left and the right about the Trump-induced misery playing out at the border.

But just being outraged on Facebook, or when talking to friends and family, isn’t enough. Our outrage must translate to political action if we don’t want to be the country that forces children to trade their families for cages and Mylar blankets.

Tell your congressman it’s unacceptable. Tell your president to change his cruel rule. And don’t forget those traumatized children when you vote this November – and every November to come.