The Humanitarian Crisis in the Oval Office

A day before President Trump delivered his first Oval Office address, a Florida prison employee named Crystal Minton was quoted in the New York Times. Hurricane Michael tore most of the roof and fence off her workplace, so the incarcerated were relocated to a Mississippi prison that is a seven-hour drive away. Thanks to the partial government shutdown that has resulted from Trump’s masturbatory wall fight, the corrections officers being sent there to work two-week shifts aren’t being paid for their service or reimbursed for their travel. Minton, a mother of seven-year-old twins, was understandably upset. But then she told on herself, and on many Trump supporters.

“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” Minton said to reporter Patricia Mazzei about Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

On Tuesday night, Trump reminded his flock that he wants to hurt the right people. He didn’t appear excited to be giving the address, and subsequent reporting verified that he was pushed to do it. Sounding like a tired lounge act singing to the few fans who still love his old songs, Trump once again marched out a fresh list of immigrant crimes and promised varied nonsense about his mythical border wall. It’ll end sex crimes, surely a chief concern of this president. It’ll help African Americans and Hispanic Americans the most, also high up on his list. The wall will stymie those darn coyotes who smuggle people across the border, the ones who are thriving now thanks to his policies…oh, well, never mind that — did you know that it’ll stop heroin, meth, cocaine and even the Fentanyl that is primarily coming from China? Boy, that’s some wall.

It was a concert of Trump’s greatest hits. His re-election could be yours for the low price of $5 donations to his campaign, or in the official-sounding “Official Secure the Border Fund.” Frightened Americans, your safety is but a click away.

The most racist part of all this wasn’t the unjust stereotyping of southern migrants as bloodthirsty rapists, drug dealers and cop-killers. It was the suggestion that building a wall would be a compassionate action.

“This is a humanitarian crisis. A crisis of the heart, and a crisis of the soul,” Trump said of the situation south of the border. Border crossings rose in 2018, but they had already been dropping precipitously since President Obama’s first term in office.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-humanitarian-crisis-776650/