Nielsen's allies trying to rehab her image for life after Trump

Liberal activists say she was complicit in an immoral migrant child separation policy — and should be ostracized by corporate America.

By ANDREW RESTUCCIA and DANIEL LIPPMAN

Kirstjen Nielsen’s image makeover has already begun — but it may be a hard sell.

Just days after she announced plans to resign as Homeland Security secretary, Nielsen and her allies are working to rehabilitate her reputation, arguing that she’s not the heartless villain depicted by liberal critics already pressuring big companies not to hire her.

Almost as soon as word of her resignation under pressure leaked, Nielsen’s allies began spinning a narrative of her tenure that casts her not as an enabler of President Donald Trump’s most controversial immigration policies, but as a guardrail against even more extreme action.

In particular, they stressed that the policy for which Nielsen is most fiercely reviled — separating detained migrant children from their parents — gave her no pleasure, and that she slow-walked or resisted other Trump demands on border security.

“I think Nielsen has been treated unfairly. A caricature was created by people who oppose the way the President talks about immigration or who even oppose current immigration law that’s been on the books for decades — and that caricature is nothing like the person she actually is,” said Thad Bingel, a former George W. Bush administration Homeland Security official who helped guide Nielsen through her Senate confirmation.

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https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/09/nielsen-life-after-trump-1264131

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Yeah, good luck with that, Eva.