A year ago Donald Trump gave the darkest, cruelest most cynical inaugural address in American history. And he has lived up to its promise. It’s perfectly fitting that on the first anniversary, the government has shut down over the issue of mass deportation of hundreds of thousands of Latinos.
That’s what he ran on and that’s what he wants to do.
Here’s how he frames the DACA issue today:
Democrats are holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration. Can’t let that happen!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018
That’s right. The DREAMers are now “unchecked illegal immigration.”
He has been all over the map on the DREAM kids. But in the end there is only one constituency that matters to him:
California is challenging the integrity of the union, not in order to help its citizens, but on the behalf of a foreign population that has no right to be here in the first place #Tucker @FoxNews— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 20, 2018
Trump may have gone through dozens of staffers in this first year. But his base, as represented by Fox News, is solidly behind him. And they set the agenda.
As The Daily Beast’s Sam Stein wrote on twitter:
It’s probably not an overstatement to say that the length of the government shut down depends largely on a Sunday evening meeting between a select few people: the producers of Fox & Friends
.