Be a shame if anything happened to it
by digby
The administration is demanding the wall but also an additional $800 million for “urgent humanitarian needs” like medical support, transportation and temporary facilities for processing and housing detainees.
The New York Times sums it up:
Translation: Mr. Trump’s mass incarceration of migrant families is overwhelming an already burdened system that, without a giant injection of taxpayer dollars, will continue to collapse, leading to ever more human suffering.
The situation is an especially rich example of the Trump Doctrine: Break something, then demand credit — and in this case a lot of money — for promising to fix it.
His doctrine is just a Mafia thug “protection” shakedown. He threatens to burn it all down unless he gets money in return. Now he’s created a “humanitarian crisis” at the border by putting migrant children in cages, separating them from their parents, and forcing others to escape their desperate situation by crossing into the most treacherous part of the desert or living in terrible conditions at border crossings.
Oh, and the president’s answer to the issue in their home countries that are motivating their desperate journey to safety is to threaten to withhold any aid to those governments because “they haven’t done anything for us” by which he means they’ve failed to keep their citizens inside their home countries (another wall perhaps?) where they face death and torture from criminals.
The Trump Doctrine is: “nice little world you have here. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”
Recall:
During a 2004 panel at the Museum of Television and Radio, in Los Angeles, Trump claimed that “every network” had tried to get him to do a reality show, but he wasn’t interested: “I don’t want to have cameras all over my office, dealing with contractors, politicians, mobsters, and everyone else I have to deal with in my business. You know, mobsters don’t like, as they’re talking to me, having cameras all over the room. It would play well on television, but it doesn’t play well with them.”