When you have a corrupt game show host as president, you are going to get corrupt game show host ideas. The New York Times just dropped what can only be called one of the more bananas stories concerning the behind-the-scenes antics of our country’s current White House occupant. According to the Times, Trump held a March Oval Office meeting with top officials where he proposed completely shutting off any and all entry along the U.S.’s 2,000 mile-long southern border … by noon the following day.
The idea, of course, like all things Trump, is ludicrous. Closing up shop like Trump demanded would and could never happen. The Times interviewed Trump’s former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Thomas D. Homan, who gave the toddler’s excuse that Trump was “frustrated” when he made the pronouncement. Maybe, but according to the Times, Trump also “had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate.”
Yes: That last quote is real. According to the report, the scheduled 30-minute meeting turned into a two-hour meeting, as advisers worked to mollify the orange wannabe dictator. Why did the meeting quadruple in time? Perhaps because at some point, “aides recalled, (Trump) suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down,” which, ostensibly, the aides had to explain was not an acceptable solution.
Predictably, the people reportedly at this meeting are known to feed at the bottom of America’s moral ocean.
Among those in the room were Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary at the time; Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state; Kevin K. McAleenan, the Customs and Border Protection chief at the time; and Stephen Miller, the White House aide who, more than anyone, had orchestrated Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda. Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff was also there, along with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and other senior staff.
According to the Times report, aides at the meeting were able to get Trump to push back his edict by one week, allowing them time to get some superficial changes done, including promises from the Mexican government that they would crack down on migrants moving into the United States. Apparently, giving Trump time to simmer down is always helpful, since no snake pit construction is known to have begun at the border this spring. Of course, one of the scarier aspects of the report is that the racist waste of oxygen known as Stephen Miller, who has a strong hold on Trump’s immigration policy, was also in the room.
The Times story also paints former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s tenure as the end of anything resembling a non-fanatic-driven immigration program. This is bogus, as Kirstjen Nielsen was in fact a horrific bureaucrat. The article does reinforce that Trump’s White House only retains those willing to not only go along with his bigoted and impossible ideas, but also those who will never even question them. The Times explains that Nielsen’s days were numbered when Trump showed up to talk with border agents in a room with Nielsen, and offered them a singular order.
My message to you is, keep them all out, the president said. Every single one of them. The country is full.
After Trump left the room, then-chief of Customs and Border Protection Kevin K. McAleenan (who is now the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security) told the room to ignore Trump’s completely illegal demand. Nielsen was pushed out shortly thereafter. The Times posits that this is a result of the purge, driven by Trump and Miller, to “change the culture” of the DHS—apparently to make it that much more racist and Gestapo-like.
Since then, Trump and McAleenan’s DHS has announced draconian changes to green cards, and tried to figure out ways to detain children indefinitely. He’s also lost legal battle after legal battle, as courts have protected some of the rights children have in our country—no matter where they were born.