Why are Republicans grasping for excuses on family separation? Because their voters support it

Trump and his supporters keep struggling to rationalize an indefensible policy — because their voters love it

AMANDA MARCOTTE
JUNE 19, 2018 10:00AM (UTC)

The number of excuses and outright lies coming out of the mouths of Donald Trump's administration and their supporters to justify tearing apart the families of people seeking political asylum has become dizzying. Children are being forcibly taken from parents who have a legal right to apply for asylum and put in detention centers that literally feature cages. There appears to be no plan for reuniting these children with their families. It's undeniably a bad look, and Trump and his apologists are coughing up a confusing and often contradictory set of lies and distortions in an effort to put some vaguely acceptable spin on the story.

So far, Trump has tried to blame family separation on the Democrats, even though it's his own policy. But then, he has also argued that the policy is justified to scare refugees away from applying for asylum, arguing that the "United States will not be a migrant camp," which he claims is "what’s happening in Europe." He has tweeted, "Crime in Germany is way up," and blamed that alleged fact on immigrants and refugees. (Crime is actually down in Germany.) Attorney General Jeff Sessions tried a biblical argument, using a verse from scripture that slave-owners also liked to quote, in an apparent claim that separating families at the border is God's will.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen tried flat-out lying, saying, "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period." When confronted with a document from Sessions outlining the policy she said did not exist, as well as evidence of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly defending it, Nielsen switched gears, claiming she had been misunderstood. Her new line: "We will not apologize for the job we do."

As often happens with these things, defenders of the policy started to cling to euphemisms and semantic arguments, with the Border Patrol saying it is "uncomfortable" with the word "cages." Right-wing pundits tried to paint the forcible separations as something like summer camp, with Laura Ingraham claiming that the stolen children get "four meals a day" and Breitbart editor Joel Pollak saying it's "better than what they had," citing a racist belief that the children's parents have denied them "knowledge of basic hygiene." (No, seriously: He said the kids wouldn't know what showers were if their Border Patrol captors hadn't shown them.)

more
https://www.salon.com/2018/06/19/why-are-republicans-grasping-for-excuses-on-family-separation-because-their-voters-support-it/