“I could at the stroke of keystrokes … within seconds could find any child within our care for any parent.” HHS Secretary Alex Azar
Forgive me for being skeptical Allie, but somehow or other I deeply doubt that it’s keys you’re stroking while you’re sitting at your desk. I’m starting to think that they put that soundproof booth in the wrong office. They should have locked you inside of that booth, and thrown away the key. If they had, maybe they wouldn’t have to justify this golden turd that sprang free from your sleazy Princeton lips to Wolf Blitzer the other day;
“It is one of the great acts of American generosity and charity, what we are doing for these unaccompanied kids who are smuggled into our country or come across illegally,”
Clue me in here Allie, cuz I’m a moron. In what religion is it a selfless act of charity to rip young children from their parents arms for the grievous sin of crossing an imaginary line, and then holding them for months in involuntary confinement, thousands of miles away? Are you like, a high priest of the First Church of Gozer?
You can always tell when a high level tool in the Trump administration is making a total cock up of a situation in trying to defend it. Because they bring in somebody else to do their talking for them, and to attempt to grease the skids for their ascent into martyrdom. Politico noted one senior HHS official trying desperately to shine up Azar’s apple;
“He works hard and is here early and late,” said an HHS official who works closely with Azar, calling him a “player-coach” who sets high expectations but also finds ways to reassure his staff as they pull long hours. “He’s personally called [refugee office] grantees to thank them for the excellent work they’re doing each and every day in caring for the minors in their shelters and facilities,” the official added.
Wow! And here I thought they stopped putting halo’s in Crackerjack boxes years ago as a child safety hazard. Here’s a thought. Maybe if Azar had spent more time coordinating on tracking paperwork with DHS and CBP when this started, instead of getting hammered at his college reunion, he wouldn’t have to be burning the midnight oil now, bucking up the line troops having to eat his shit sandwich.
Mark my words, this is going to be worse for the GOP than Katrina, for one simple reason. With Katrina, Bush Lite showed callous indifference for human suffering caused by a natural disaster. With the child separation crisis, the Trump administration is showing depraved indifference to a wholly self made disaster! There is a logic quantum leap in terms of messaging in blaming Dubya for being a soulless dick about the aftermath of a hurricane, and blaming the Trump administration for struggling to reunite families that they callously and gleefully ripped apart as a political tactic.
And the hit parade of depraved indifference just keeps rolling on, with no commercial interruptions. A federal judge in San Diego just flogged a sacrificial lamb from the DOJ who tried to argue in court that since the parents had been deported, the government no longer had any responsibility to attempt to reunite the children with their parents! The judge basically told the DOJ flunky that they might want to start checking Expedia for discount tickets to Central America and back.
This issue is going to last through the 2018 midterms. HHS and the Trump administration was unable to reunite 50% of the “under 5” children in two weeks, and there were only 102 of them. Wadda ya think the chances of reuniting the other 2,200 of them in the next two weeks are? And if the administration had to confirm that 19 parents had already been deported, and 19 more released and lost track of out of the 102 tender age families they had to reunite, how many more do you think they’re going to find when they start to work on the 2,200 other detained minors? And to their credit, for once the media is gnawing on a story like a dog with a fresh pork chop bone, it isn’t going to fade into the background anytime soon.
And, to make the misery complete, as the trickle of tender age children begin to get reunited with their parents, a whole new category of fresh horror stories begin to emerge. Children trying to reject their mothers, screaming “I want Miss!”, “Miss” being the social worker that had cared for the child in detention. How heartbreaking is it when a 3 year old has a stronger bond with a social worker than she has with her mother. Or the young boy who kept asking his mother when they were reunited if his father was dead, because he never called the child when the child was in detention. Sadly, this story line will only intensify as more reunifications take place, and the media will be there to report them.
GOP incumbents can’t run away from this, and they can’t crocodile tear their way out of it either. Let them try to sympathize with the suffering of the mothers and children. The 30 second spot goes like this; A tearful mother holding an unresponsive 3 year old, with the face of someone who just survived a train wreck, immediately followed by a clip of the incumbent, praising El Pendejo President for his brilliant leadership. You broke it motherf*ckers, now you own it.
