Donald Trump was recently muttering that maybe what we needed here in this not-yet-a-dictatorship country was a state-run news media. I don't know why, when you've got Fox News and the light fascists of Sinclair Media already doing that heavy lifting for you.
Case in point, the new "must-run" Sinclair Media segment forced upon their local television stations, this one featuring ex-Trump toady Boris Epshteyn explaining to your town that tear gassing refugee children is good now.
“The fact of the matter is that this is an attempted invasion of our country, period,” he continues, borrowing language from his former boss.
Boris is referring to a protest on the Mexican side of the border from several thousand asylum-seekers trapped in a makeshift refugee shelter while the United States processes fewer than 100 of their applications per day. The administration has been attempting to light the public's hair on fire over a caravan of asylum seekers traveling to the United States, but despite many weeks in which to plan, it seems, they’ve done approximately nothing to prepare for those asylum claims aside from laying down a few hundred feet of razor wire. (Far more likely: This was the plan all along. Process asylum claims at a snail's pace, hoping to starve the rest of the asylum seekers out of the camps during the long wait. This appears to be the same play that border officials have attempted during previous administration attempts to ratchet up panic over immigrants.)
Boris was also sure to mention that "Democrat Congresswoman Maxine Waters" was one of the people who objected to the use of tear gas. You can infer what you like from the ongoing nationalist obsession with Maxine Waters; you do not need to be a crack detective to decipher that particular Boris code.
It appears to be true that several protesters attempted to cross the border during the protest; photographs of the resulting scene suggest that tear gas was not targeted at them specifically, but at the crowd in general, including the many children present.
Tear gassing refugee families demanding better treatment by U.S. and Mexican authorities is not a noble decision, no matter how you spin it, and it's a curious choice even for the Sinclair Media crowd. As Trump is finding himself, there's only so much manure you can heap; when viewers have access to information other than what Boris Epshteyn is feeding them, every attempt at aggressive spin such as "well the kids had it coming, because INVASION" threatens to make Boris Epshteyn look less an "analyst" than a blustering psychopath.
And so far, viewers have access to that other information. The pictures of children being tear gassed have been widely distributed, and widely seen. The pictures are more persuasive than any of the faux-panic the nationalists of Sinclair have been able to come up with. Those pictures will be remembered long after Sinclair's latest must-run segment has been aired and forgotten.