Is Separating Children From Their Parents Trump's Katrina Moment?

After weeks of horrible pictures and video clips about ICE thugs torturing migrant families and kidnapping their children, the Orange Man relented.

Well, sort of.

But can we claim that this was a big deal for his base, as did the former New York Times editor and current Guardian columnist Jill Abramson, that the new policy of taking away children and toddlers from their families and putting them in metal cages was Donald Trump's Katrina moment.

She is adamant about it.

I, on the other hand, don't think so.

There is absolutely nothing Donald J. Trump could do that would turn his base against him.

Nothing.

He famously said:

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters”

And he was right.

You could have a clip of him having sex with a minor and the evangelicals would rush to call him a man of God.

You could show him in that Moscow hotel with some sort of golden shower situation, Republicans would applaud him for his unconventional hair growth techniques.

You could prove that he is milking the presidency for personal economic gain and his base will praise him for his business acumen.

Well, they are already doing that last one.

There are two reasons for that.

First, that's because for the Republican party voters Trump is the Savior.

He is the man who put black and brown people down (literally and figuratively), put women in their place and restore the good old days when blacks were called with the n-word, Mexicans were wetbacks and women knew that the kitchen was their sole domain.

Plus and perhaps most importantly, in a polarized society, he knows how to ridicule libturds and kick them in the teeth.

Did I mention that the Republican base is racist? They are.

African Americans and Hispanics are not really human in their eyes. Remember, for them, the elegant and brilliant and supremely accomplished Michelle Obama (Princeton and Harvard Law School alumnus) was an ape on heels.

Forced separation of Mexican toddlers from their mothers is nothing to them.

Trump's first campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was on Fox News recently and when they mentioned a ten year old girl with Down syndrome was separated from her parents, his response was "womp, womp."

Hilarious, right? A frightened, handicapped child is so funny when they are Mexican.

There is more.

In recent days, abuse claims have surfaced about how migrant children have been detained at two centres. 

Juveniles held in a detention centre in Virginia say they were handcuffed, beaten, left nude in concrete cells and locked in solitary confinement, the Associated Press reported.
Some have said guards strapped them to chairs with bags over their heads.

Can you say, Vel" d'Hiv Roundup?

I sense you disagree with my characterization of GOP voters.

Well, according to the most recent Gallup poll as reported by FiveThirtyEight,

Trump does have near-ironclad support (close to 90 percent approval, according to Gallup) among self-described Republicans nationally.

See what I mean? 90 percent.

More importantly, a clear majority of Republicans approve of the separation of children from their parents.

A strange thing happened on the way to a predicted universal condemnation of Mr Trump's policy of separating children from parents who cross the US-Mexico border without documentation. It turns out Republican voters like it. 

According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, while 91% of Democrats and 68% of independents oppose separating asylum-seekers and others in the US illegally from their children, 55% of Republicans support it. 

Far from being Trump's Katrina moment, this is his victory lap.

Trump voters adore him because he got rid of the dog-whistle.  He was the first openly racist presidential candidate and Republicans love him for that.

That is why the GOP will never abandon him, He is their wet dream.

The second reason is the media coverage of all things Trump.

Trump voters get their news from Fox. Fox is an echo chamber. They don't mention children chained to walls or sleeping on concrete floors or the fact that none of the kidnapped 2300 kids will ever be returned to their parents.

If you watch Fox News they are on a cushy summer camp having fun.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham called the detention centres "essentially summer camps", and praised Mr Trump for "doing what we should have been doing all along, prosecuting all border crashers". 

Conservative author Ann Coulter called the children "child actors weeping and crying" on TV networks.

But it is not just Fox News. The so called liberal media is guilty of helping the Trump agenda by not challenging his lies.

For weeks, Trump claimed that this cruel policy was a legacy of the Democrats and he was helpless to change it. Everybody knew that this was a huge lie as it was something enacted by his KKK-loving garden gnome Attorney General Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions.

But you wouldn't know this if you were reading about it on BBC News. This was a Trump tweet.

This is how BBC explained it.

There is no law that mandates separating children from parents who cross the border illegally. 

In 1997, Democratic President Bill Clinton signed the Flores Settlement law that required unaccompanied minors who arrive in the US to be released to their parents, a legal guardian or an adult relative, If no relatives are available then the relevant government agency can appoint an appropriate adult to look after the child. 

And in 2008, Republican President George W. Bush signed an anti-trafficking statute that requires unaccompanied minors to be transferred out of immigration centres within 72 hours. Neither of these recommends separating families.

Basically, anything and everything except to say that Trump is not telling the truth. And the piece was entitled "Reality Check."

Right.

You so care don;t U 

Another excellent example is the jacket Melania chose to wear to visit a children detention center.

I Really Don't Care, Do U? said her vetement.

Somehow, most media outlets pondered whether this was a hidden message.  This was so hard to decipher.

What could it mean?

BBC provided five different explanations.

I am not kidding.

Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi, questioned in an article entitled "the great Melania mystery, does she really care?"

Who could tell? The message was so scrambled.

The Independent was equally perplexed. They wondered "Why didn't someone stop Melania Trump from wearing that 'I really don't care' jacket?"

Well, can you imagine the shitstorm if Michelle Obama went to a similar event with this outfit?

On his late-night show, comedian Stephen Colbert asked a version of the question reverberating around political Washington: “How many people would get fired for this at a normal White House? One? Five? The entire executive branch? ... People who were supposedly on her side let her get on a plane with a jacket that said, ‘I really don’t care, do you?’”

In Melania's case, her spokespeople said there was no hidden message and most media outlets reported that.

Now, can you see the message?

If you can, you are are so biased.

Shame on you.

It is just a jacket.

Donald Trump is what you get when you put together a rabidly racist electorate with a meak media.

So, no, this is not his Katrina moment.

And he will never have a Katrina moment as long as Fox News exists and the rest of the media will give him a free pass on every lie.