Donald Trump Celebrates The Risen Lord With Threats To Deport Jesús
But he'll kick them out with great heart
Donald Trump spent his Easter Sunday reflecting on the Gospels' message of love and peace, plus watching "Fox & Friends" and having a meltdown about all the scary brown people trying to sneak into America because Democrats are evil. We think he's a little unclear on the whole "whatever you do for the least of these brothers and sisters" part.
Just as Christ used parables, Trump distilled his Easter homily into a series of bile-soaked Tweets:
There's a whole lot to unpack there; let's start with those "caravans," which were the focus of a couple of scary "Fox & Friends" segments about a caravan of asylum-seekers from Central America. As ABC News reports, there really is a group of about 1,200 Central Americans traveling north, organized by a group called "Pueblos Sin Fronteras" (People Without Borders) with the goals of calling attention to human rights in Central America and American anti-immigrant policies; traveling together in a large group also gives them a bit more protection from human traffickers and robbers who often prey on migrants.
Alex Mensing, a representative of Pueblos Sin Fronteras, told ABC News that as the group makes its way north, the marchers will be making contact with lawyers from Mexico and the USA about seeking asylum in one country or the other. He also pointed out that while some members of the march may go it alone and try to cross the border illegally, most will head for an official port of entry in California, Arizona, or New Mexico, depending on which of several trains they're able to hop. Mensing said most of the migrants will claim asylum when they get to the border, and are fully aware they're likely to face detention once their asylum claims are heard, right there at the border crossing stations:
“We accompany them to an official port of entry,” he said. “People aren’t going to unofficial points of entry.”
Fox News, of course, referred to the group as an "army of migrants marching to America" and a "small migrant army marching toward the United States." Gotta build a 2,000-mile wall to make sure the migrants who were already headed to an official port of entry know where it is. Also, America First!
. @tomilahren on migrant marchers headed to US: We can have compassion for these people but it doesn’t mean the laws don’t matter - Americans come first pic.twitter.com/0ME64e2soo
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) April 1, 2018
The Idiot in Chief was at it again this morning, because either "Fox & Friends" was still hyping the story, or he didn't notice he was watching Sunday's piece again on TiVo:
Trump's claims that the asylum seekers are all out to take advantage of DACA are, as the Washington Post points out, pure hooey:
In his comments Sunday, he appeared to be confused about the rules of the program. To qualify, immigrants must have lived in the United States since 2007, have arrived in the country before age 16 and have been younger than 31 on June 15, 2012. No one arriving in the country after that date is eligible.
Buzzfeed reporter Adolfo Flores, whose Friday story on the migrant caravan set off "Fox & Friends" in the first place, tweeted Sunday that, no, none of the marchers were being lured north by that sweet DACA amnesty:
Trump also chinga'd the perro in his mention of "catch and release," which, no, is not a law passed by Democrats. It's not even an actual policy; it's really just slang, if anything,
shorthand for immigration officials freeing up detention center space by allowing immigrants to remain at large if they are not seen as security risks. The Trump administration has frequently claimed that the policy ended when the new president took office.
But detention centers have continued releasing low-risk immigrants, as the backlog of immigration court cases reaches the hundreds of thousands.
Oh, hey, how about how the Great Big Beautiful Wall will stop drugs from coming into the US? Oopsies, once again, there's a WaPo debunking:
The budget for the U.S. Coast Guard stayed flat in 2018 despite spending increases across the Pentagon (the Coast Guard falls under the Department of Homeland Security). But the service seizes three times as much cocaine moving by sea as what U.S. agencies intercept at border checkpoints, putting a dent into Trump’s argument that a border wall would dry up the supply of hard drugs in the United States.
Thanks a lot, WaPo -- your obstinate fact-checking just made the wall ten feet higher.
So, is anything actually going to change as a result of Trump's declarations -- twice now -- that DACA is dead? Who the fuck knows? It's Trump! Courts have already blocked the administration from deporting Dreamers, and a tweet can't override that. But that doesn't mean Trump won't try. Remember, his tweets are all Official Policy Statements, including the ones about who should play him on SNL.
In the words of eminent man of letters Rick Santorum, "What a snob!"
Describes "the Donald" to a tee!