Laura Ingraham is depraved hypocrite. A shocker, I know.
Last night, on her Faux News show, Laura Ingraham did a segment on Donald Trump’s policy of separating children from their parents at the borde. She claimed that the detention facilities were like a “summer camp” or a “boarding school” for kids.
The huge majority of Americans are horrified that young children are being ripped away from their parents, instinctively knowing that this is traumatizing to both the children and their parents. The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a strong statement condemning Trump’s policy. Academy president, Dr. Colleen Kraft, after visiting a detention facility, referred to it as "child abuse."
What is particularly galling about Ingraham’s attempts to minimize the damage done to the kids separated from their parents and warehoused in institutions is that she knows better. Ingraham is the mother of a girl adopted from Guatemala in 2008, and two boys adopted from Russia in 2009 and 2011. As a prospective adoptive parent who was in a Russian program and then another program in a former Soviet republic at that same time, I know that Ingraham had mandated education on the detrimental effects institutionalization has on the developmental, physical, and mental health of children. She almost certainly has experience in dealing with the immediate and long term sequelae of childhood institutionalization through parenting her three children.
No doubt this experience led her to work with the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute in September 2013 to advocate and promote adoption after Vladimir Putin shut down the adoption of Russian orphans by Americans as retaliation for passage of the Sergei Magnitsky Act, signed into law by President Obama in December, 2013. From CCAI (emphasis mine):
Today, TV personality Laura Ingraham, who has three adopted children, released a video and related campaign to speak directly to Vladamir Putin about his country’s senseless ban on international adoptions by Americans. In addition to creating and posting the video, Ingraham called on all those who support adoption as a worthy and effective way to find homes for children who desperately need them to use it to spread the message. “Help us raise awareness about the wonders of adoption, so that we may better respond to the desperate needs of innocent children. [T]his focus on Russian orphans is the first of many efforts we will be spearheading to promote both domestic and international adoptions. More than anything abandoned children want to be with caring families who love and care for them,” said Ingraham.
From her own blog promoting her now defunct Adopt A New Attitude initiative dated September 30, 2013 (emphasis mine):
Allowing thousands of children to suffer as this ban continues is unconscionable. The time to act is now. That is why we've founded the “Adopt a New Attitude Project.” It is the first step of a multi-pronged effort to help those who want to adopt internationally. We want children to be in loving families, not cold institutions, and as the adoptive mom of three children, including two Russian boys, I am dedicated to helping adoptive parents bring these children home. Together, we can adopt a new attitude.
So there you have it. Laura Ingraham, champion of institutionalized children in 2013. Defender of Trump ripping children away from parents and institutionalizing them in cages in 2018. Shameless.