It was another mind-numbing day at Monday's White House briefing. Among the usual barrage of lies, blasphemies, obfuscation, and stupidity, one of many topics discussed was immigration and family separation. Here's a nutshell tweet, just to give you some idea of the ridiculousness spewing from press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Right, so Congress must pass a bill that Trump said just last week they should forget about passing until after the big "Red Wave" election. If no immigration bill passes Congress (which it almost certainly won't), Sanders declined to say whether families would begin being separated again after being detained for the 20 days allowed by the Flores settlement.
And why hasn’t Congress passed that bill?
"That is because no Democrat will get on board and support a solution," Sanders said from the podium, completely ignoring the fact that House Republicans negotiated the bill entirely amongst themselves, never inviting Democrats to the table. Reporter Jeff Zeleny dared to point that out.
Reporter: That's a Republican issue. Republicans cannot pass these Republican bills. What is the president doing as the leader of the party to try to get...
SHS: Jeff, these aren't Republican bills. These are bills that fix a broken system. They may have Republican sponsor, but these should be bipartisan.
Well, Sarah, the way to get a bipartisan bill is to actually invite Democrats to the table and work out a bill that some of them are willing to cosponsor. The House GOP leadership did not do that. They negotiated a bill entirely amongst themselves and called it a "compromise" between the opposing factions in their own caucus.
So yes, that is most definitely a “Republican bill.” And it was negotiated by House GOP leaders in bad faith anyway because they knew whatever they were able to assemble that stood any chance of passing the House on Republican votes alone would never pass the Senate. And now, it seems, it may not even pass the House. But whatever happens to that immigration bill: it’s all GOP.