Rachel Maddow did a segment last night on Trump’s monstrous family separation policy at the border and the monsters who implemented it, making the point that these same cruel and incompetent people are now running the botched response to the coronavirus, with predictable results. It’s worth watching, IMO, even if Rachel ain’t your cup of tea.
In the segment, Maddow wondered aloud which terrible thing Trump’s flunkies would be most remembered for, and she made the case that ripping children away from their families is the worst. It is hard to beat in terms of sheer cruelty.
The occasion for revisiting these (ongoing!) cruelties was a new book by Maddow’s NBC colleague, Jacob Soboroff: “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy.” In addition to reminding me to be ashamed to be an American, the segment put to rest any curiosity I had about how Trump advisor Stephen Miller found a carbon-based life form who would accept his sorry hand in marriage: he simply found someone as awful and inhuman as himself. Via TPM:
Katie Miller, Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary, casually admitted to having zero empathy for the thousands of migrant children who suffered under the Trump administration’s infamous family separation policy at the border in 2018, according to NBC News reporter Jacob Soboroff.
In his new book, titled “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy,” Soboroff recounts a jaw-dropping conversation with Miller, who was serving as deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security at the time, on the administration’s policy of ripping kids from their families and holding them in squalid detention centers under the custody of cruel U.S. border officials.
“My family and colleagues told me that when I have kids, I’ll think about the separations differently, but I don’t think so,” Miller told Soboroff. “DHS sent me to the border to see the separations for myself, to try to make me more compassionate, but it didn’t work.”
“It didn’t work? I will never forget what I saw,” the reporter replied. “Seriously. Are you a white nationalist?”
“No, but I believe if you come to America, you should assimilate. Why do we need to have ‘Little Havana’?” the senior administration official asked.
Pence’s office did not respond to TPM’s request for comment.
I have questions. What hideous thing did Katie Miller say or do that made even people who were willing to work for the Trump administration note that the woman had a compassion deficit? Did we taxpayers foot the bill for the trip that failed to awaken a shred of humanity in Katie Miller?
Last week we talked about a potential reckoning for Trump-era wrongdoing if Biden wins. I don’t know about y’all, but holding these monsters to account on family separation is high on my personal list of priorities. Open thread.
Felanius Kootea
I just wonder what these people think will happen after Trump loses? I guess the Mercers will keep Steve Miller and his awful wife on their payroll, but some of the people in the Trump administration will be unemployable for the rest of their natural lives.
Jerzy Russian
Christ, what an asshole!
Citizen Alan
I honestly pray to God that Katie Miller never has children. She couldn’t possibly love them. At best, they’d grow up as emotional cripples as sociopathic as their parents. At worst, she’d shake them to death in infancy the first time they cried too much.
different-church-lady
Hey, I got an idea: let’s drop Katie Miller into the middle of Kolkata and tell her to not speak any English nor associate with any Westerners and see how quickly she assimilates.
Kathleen
Amen to that Betty. I look forward to her and Ivanka partnering in a new clothing line – Frocks By Frau Goebbels.
lgerard
The last line of Katie Miller’s Wiki page made me laugh out loud, until someone just changed it.
Doesn’t change the fact that she is as loathsome as he is.
MomSense
@Citizen Alan:
She’s pregnant.
Betty Cracker
@Citizen Alan: She tested positive for coronavirus recently, and media reports noted she was expecting. It’s possible she’ll dote on her own children. Lots of Nazis did while committing atrocities.
geg6
Yes, the child separation and bounties on troops are both my most infuriating beefs with these cretins. The COVID response is sickening, but I totally expected pretty much exactly what happened with it because these people are so dumb. I’d add helping the Russians steal the election to that, but it happened before the administration did, so I’ll keep it off my list as an administration fuck up that pisses me off and I’ll channel that into my very personal hatred for Trump, the fucking traitor, himself.
My hate for these people really has no bounds. I used to think and say that I never really hated anyone but at my ripe old age, I have learned that I am capable of more hate than I ever thought a liberal like me could.
NotMax
Direct descendant of Barbara Bush’s “So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?’
Felanius Kootea
@Citizen Alan: This is how we got Trump in the first place – his dad. The Millers will likely be raising the next generation of right-wing narcissistic sociopaths, but hopefully the Republican Party will have gone the way of the Whigs by the time their children are interested in politics and they can join the other losers in the Libertarian party.
Or the children might just rebel and be more like Miller’s uncle, who penned a piece blasting his nephew for inhumane immigration policies. I hope that’s what happens.
Fair Economist
Total nonsense as well as evil. They are taking children from people fleeing M-13 and seeking asylum. They haven’t even had an opportunity to assimilate.
Brachiator
You would think that the Cuban Americans who think that Republicans love them might re-think their position. Naw, probably not.
Not much can be said for such a vile person, or her equally vile husband.
And of course, as has been noted, it’s pretty tough to assimilate if you are a child in a cage.
Ella in New Mexico
@MomSense:
@Citizen Alan:
Cue to “Even the NAZIS loved their children…”
Sigh.
@Felanius Kootea:
Or Kellyanne Conway’s teenage daughter, who recently posted something on Twitter under her Dad’s feed about them not blaming her for their failed marriage…
MagdaInBlack
@different-church-lady:
My thought exactly.
Roger Moore
I wonder if she feels the same way about St. Patrick’s Day and Columbus Day, both of which are there to make specific ethnic groups feel more welcomed.
Roger Moore
@Felanius Kootea:
Sadly, I believe anyone above a certain level in the Trump Administration will have a permanent place on Wingnut Welfare.
cope
As much as I hope it will happen, I have little faith that anybody will ever pay any formalized legal price for the child separations, sorry to say. Nor do I expect any of the alpha assholes of the trump administration* to go begging for jobs in the after times. My feeling is that the most venal nodes of the Republican party have created an infrastructure that will assure they are able to continue living the lives to which they have become accustomed.
No One of Consequence
Truth and Reconciliation Commission or GTFO!
It is my sincerest wish that Biden establishes a taskforce to review each and every action taken by this MalAdministration, and determines if it is harmful to our Nation or not. If it is, it shall be rescinded directly.
Needless to say, I believe this will be such a task, as to require a team of people and years to complete. Start with the most harmful stuff first, but be sure to GET IT ALL.
We have healing to do. A LOT of it. A NECESSARY REQUIREMENT for healing to begin, is for the Nation to excise the infection so that the body politic and our nation can begin to heal. Unless and until this is done, the wounds caused by this Bastard will fester and grow.
My opinion, for what its worth, but I imagine it is held by more than just me.
Peace,
– NOoC
Jeffro
All those in favor of keeping every last trumpista in a cage until every last immigrant kid is reunited with his/her parents, and given a stipend from said trumpistas’ liquidated assets…?
Anonymous At Work
I deal and studied the Nuremberg Trials, as in all 18. The High Command Trial was first but they tried, convicted and sentenced to hard labor more than a few. While I doubt there’s stomach to sentence everyone involved to 20 years hard labor, I sincerely hope Biden’s compassion combined with experience from TARP’s lack of accountability will make more than a few heads roll. At the very least, Yomashita is still good law (in case German SAG wants to extradite anyone).
Eunicecycle
This still horrifies me to the point of despair. I used to be a guardian ad litem for the local family court. Children were removed when their homes were not safe or were neglectful. No matter how awful the home was, the children ALWAYS wanted to go home. I sometimes supervised their visits with their parents, and splitting them up was often tearful. I can’t imagine doing this day after day and still having a soul. I am not criticizing social workers who have a hard enough job. I am criticizing Border Patrol agents who separate families for no good reason.
Chyron HR
“We need to put them in cages because they won’t assimilate.” is one spicy double chalupa of a take.
donnah
@Betty Cracker: You are far more charitable than I. The Miller’s spawn will likely be quarantined upon birth and cared for by a nanny until it can function on its own. It might actually be better that way.
patrick Il
@MomSense:
with what?
Amir Khalid
I think I understand now what kind of woman would marry Stephen Miller.
Roger Moore
@Chyron HR:
It’s not just “we need to put them in cages because they won’t assimilate”. These are people who have literally just gotten here. She’s criticizing refugees from other countries for not being assimilated the day they show up asking for asylum.
senyordave
“Carbon-based life form” describes Katie Miller pretty well, although it is alarming to me that I share that same characteristic with her.
As for “Eharmonster”, have you trademarked that yet? Because there are a lot of people out there who have two Trumpsters as parents who might need a service like that someday.
John Revolta
So much for the people who worried what the poor dewy young miss was getting her self into. If I was cursed with an overabundance of compassion, right now I’d be worried about Miller.
West of the Cascades
We don’t need a taskforce to figure that out – we can simply presume it for everything it’s done and get on with the rescinding.
Jeffro
@Amir Khalid: they’d almost have to be soul mates (‘soulless mates’?) , given how utterly repellent his views are.
piratedan
remember, these same people watched Nixon being allowed to walk (granted, not so for all of his henchmen) and virtually zero repercussions for Reagan in Iran/Contra and watched 43 get essentially bupkis for his actions. They have every reason to suspect that we’ll all be so fucking exhausted trying to unfuck their collective damage that they’ll be little oxygen left to hold them accountable. You can rest assured that a highly vocal element of the Fourth Estate will work to make that so.
Me, I have to admit to certain lurid fantasies that alternate between having them being shot into the sun, left stranded on the floating pile of aggregate garbage in the Pacific or drafting them into community service programs that benefit minorities while stripping them of all of their wealth.
karensky
Soboroff’s book is titled “Separated. An American Tragedy.”
When I saw him on Maddow last night I thought he had aged at least 10 years in a year. I hope he has a plan to take care of himself.
patrick Il
Kidnapping children as policy was where I thought the American people, even Trump voters, would stand together in outrage. I’m still shocked a subset of the American people are OK with it.
kindness
Speaking of the karmic paybacks the racist/fascist set has coming would make me sound no better than they are. I’m not saying those goulish thoughts don’t go through my mind but I at least know better than to utter them publicly. Budda or Jesus I ain’t. I just try to get there.
There has to be a way to do away with the money spigot these racists are now thriving under. I don’t know how to do that other than make contributions non-tax deductable. God knows the billionaires wouldn’t give half the money they do if they couldn’t write it off. They are cheap ass folk.
MazeDancer
How did Katie and Stephen, two nazis, get a rabbi to marry them?
And, clearly, a horrible, horrible person. Very sad that they are going to reproduce.
Captain C
Until they were blatantly losing the war. Then we have at least one case of a Nazi murdering all six of his children before committing mutual suicide with his wife.
MisterForkbeard
Once again, reporters holding back critical and important information so they can sell it to the nation. Sigh.
p.a.
Just watching recorded discussion on youtube from (Robert) Dole Institute: How the Red Army Defeated Germany; the 3 [German] Excuses. Excuse 1: that idiot Adolph Hitler. The speaker sardonically says if you read some histories for 12 years the only man in Germany was Adolph Hitler; well Hitler had help.
So too Twittler. When this is over the hammer has to fall on lots of accomplices, none of this “let’s just look forward” bullshit AGAIN. These people are the result of looking forward after Nixon, Reagan, and W. Gotta root out every rat involved.
bemused
@MomSense:
That poor kid stuck with those parents.
Keithly
Abyssus abyssum invocat.
Hoodie
I detect entitled, spoiled brat more than committed Nazi but, perhaps, that is a normal development curve for a fascist. She was part of a frat/sorority political mafia at UF, dad is a bigshot attorney and UF alum. She’s also a moron. WTF does assimilation have to do with separating kids from parents? They have to raised by the state so that don’t get polluted by their parents’ foreignness?
Taken4Granite
@piratedan: Shooting them into the sun takes a lot of Delta v, probably more than they’re worth. But I am sympathetic to your other two fantasies.
gene108
@different-church-lady:
In a large city in India, like Kolkata, enough signs are in English, you can manage as an English speaker.
Dropping her off in a village somewhere would be a real challenge.
Emma from FL
@Brachiator: Well, as I Cuban who has spent most of her life outside the Cuban refugee culture (notice “most”; I would never deny who I am even if I could) I’m glad she used that example. Maybe it will catch the eye of a few of my kind. And change their minds. Every vote counts.
Betty Cracker
@MisterForkbeard: That’s fair to say of someone like Bolton, who had access to relevant information in an ongoing inquiry that he withheld for profit. I don’t think it’s fair to say here. AFAIK, the only news Soboroff broke was that Katie Miller is a heartless ghoul, something that anyone paying attention could have easily guessed and that is not actionable in any case.
dexwood
I wonder if Melania has given Katie her I Really Don’t Care, Do U jacket? Maybe they have matching outfits.
Roger Moore
@Hoodie:
When I reread that statement, I think it’s not an attempt to connect what’s being done to those asylum-seeking families to anything about ethnic neighborhoods. She’s responding to the question about whether she’s a white nationalist. Instead of justifying why tearing kids away from their families is OK, she jumps to something else she doesn’t like about immigrants that she thinks will be more acceptable.
Betty Cracker
@Hoodie: I’m also a UF alum, and I’ve got to admit my school turned out a lot of scumbags, including Marco Rubio, but it’s nothing compared to the burden borne by graduates of the Wharton School.
mrmoshpotato
Drop the monstrous bitch into a volcano. Her pick.
ETA – I wonder if Miller (both) pinatas have started to be made yet.
trollhattan
All the scruples of Betsy DeVos without the charm. Nice gig you got there, Miller.
Is it possible that Pence attracts worse people than Trump does?
dww44
Not sure who on our side is not a fan of Maddow, but IMO there’s no one on nighttime cable news who’s been more relevant and focused on the existential issues created be Trump. More importantly, she tackles those issues without providing.too much oxygen to the Trump World’s daily outrages. She actually cares deeply about those being harmed by his policies.
Cameron
Permanent Caribbean vacation at Camp X-Ray for all of them.
Ramiah Ariya
We have to remember that through out the child separation implementation, the liberal press did not have good arguments or good questions against the administration officials when they appeared on television. Instead the officials were allowed to normalise and lie about it. They do the same thing now.
I read an article in Vox about how Trump was wrong about his current direction of race-baiting, but the entire article kept quoting opinion polls, about how Americans were not on Trump’s side. The press did the same thing during the child separation years – they would quote poll after poll showing how the policy was unpopular, but this is an useless argument to make – opinion polls can easily be dismissed AND Trump supporters have always claimed that his leadership is to implement unpopular but necessary policies.
Instead of citing polls, it is better to confront the internal contradictions in his policies – for example, if America is burning due to “left-wing fascism” where are the arrests? Where are the military deployments to protect the cities?
Citing polls to show that child separation is unpopular is a sure way to get your arguments dismissed.
Betty
low-tech cyclist
@patrick Il:
Cthulhu Jr.
Kropacetic
From New York Times today:
They’ll pull this shit with any Democrat. They’ll go after those pushing hardest to reign in the financial sector first. But in the end, anything short of absolute fealty is unacceptable.
Roger Moore
@mrmoshpotato:
I’m not sure we want to anger Pele with such an unsuitable sacrifice.
Baud
@dww44: I think Adam Silverman doesn’t like her. Aside from him, mostly, she gets criticized for her long wind-ups to the intro story. I haven’t watched in a while, so I don’t know if that’s changed with the daily barrage of bad news.
scav
OT, but there’s something interesting in the low rumblings, twitches and connections over in Deutsche Bank world. Epstein, NYCity, Russian models, co-conspirators other than Ghislaine Maxwell, — all sorts of playthings for Lincoln Project types to pick up and throw at walls to test stickiness in a media market dying for other news to cover.
The Guardian and the FYNYT
Ladyraxterinok
@Betty Cracker:
There are several believable tales of Nazi extermination camp commanders spending quiet evenings in their camp lodgings, drinking a nice beer, listening to a classic piece by a German composer (presumably NOT Mendelssohn), reading a German novel, with photos of his wife and children lovingly displayed on the bookcase
Kropacetic
No, I see it, it’s right there at #62.
scav
@Baud: Just what 2020 needs, a Cyberman invasion!!!
mrmoshpotato
@Roger Moore: Point taken.
Roger Moore
@Kropacetic:
IMO, almost any attempt to explain movements on Wall Street is a sucker’s bet. The market is inherently noisy, so there will be lots of small movements that don’t connect to the world outside the stock market in any meaningful way. Analysts would be better to apply some of the same smoothing techniques we’ve been applying to COVID data so they don’t try to overthink things.
topclimber
@p.a.: To be fair, the #1 reason Allies had to beat him at all was that Hitler made that war and wasn’t so dumb about it at the start.
Kropacetic
You’re certainly right about that.
I don’t think the issue here is the actual movement of the stocks, though. The NYT and/or investors with the ear of people who can get things published at the Times are trying to feed a perception; that Ds are bad for investors and, by extension, the rest of the economy.
low-tech cyclist
@piratedan:
Gitmo. I want all the bastards locked up in Gitmo.
ETA: Beaten to the punch by @Cameron.
Roger Moore
@Kropacetic:
I think it’s more that they actually believe that stuff. The investors feel put upon and disrespected by the Democrats, and that makes them believe the Democrats are bad for the market. It doesn’t matter that stocks have done better under Democratic administrations than under Republicans for the past 100 years; their feelings are what really matter.
low-tech cyclist
@Kropacetic:
This. Anyone who thinks the market will do OK through the current economic carnage, but will crash on account of whatever Biden does – just how out to lunch do you have to be to buy into that?
Even if you report for the business section of the NYT, you should be able to see through this. And yet.
Sab
@Eunicecycle: My step-daughter went into (bad) foster care from age 4 to 10 when her single mother was put into a nursing home with MS. My husband adopted her at 10. Her mom died when she was 12. She is almost 40 and still has major issues. (She is, however, an excellent mom and a very good step-mom.) She had never talked about her mother and foster care until she read about these separations. As she said, she knew why she was losing her mother because her mother and her mother’s friends explained it to her in her own language. These kids have no idea what s happening to them or why.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@MomSense:
Does being implanted with the embryonic creature from Alien really count as a pregnancy?
Ladyraxterinok
@Ladyraxterinok:
Paul Celan wrote a poem Death Fugue about the death camps. It’s haunting and horrific in English. But in the original German Todesfuege…..’Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland’
low-tech cyclist
Hard to argue with that. I know I’m a hothead and all, but I said many times last year that Trump should have been impeached over this, in addition to the Ukraine business and/or the Mueller report.
Not only did hearing about it tear me apart, but I figured a lot of Americans could relate to this more than they could to the Mueller report or the Ukraine extortion.
Oddly enough, that’s also how I feel (and figure) about the continually mounting Covid-19 death toll.
Sab
@MisterForkbeard: His reporting on the border has been good. He didn’t hold anything back. My initial impression of him was that he was kind of right wing, but he has never held back about how horrified he has been about what is going on at the border.
Kropacetic
Goddamned snowflakes..
And if the Obama years are any indication, this will lead at least some people to forego useful investments out of some combination of fear and spite. Not enough to do major harm to the economy, but plenty to manufacture bad PR out of thin air.
Also, why are we concerned that the people who have the most may be slightly put out when people are literally dying due to our ongoing failure to invest in our own government, whether for expertise or ensuring people have the tools they need to care for themselves?
Fixt
Ladyraxterinok
@Ladyraxterinok:
After the war, Germans said the old saying that Germany was a nation of Dichter und Denker had been changed to a nation of Richter und Henker. Poets and thinkers to judges and executioners
laura
@Jeffro: Aye! Count me in.
I hope there are two cages small enough to hold Miller and Mrs. but not big enough for them to stand up or stretch out. Goose gander sauce and the like.
scav
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Come come. As if such as they would condone miscegenation! This is surely a case of an Alien he creature and an Alien she creature implanting somehow an embryonic Alien creature. But all the proper kinds of Aliens.
Kropacetic
I agree with MisterForkbeard that some reporters and government officials with useful information have been holding back to sell it as a book.
::Raises both fists and shakes them in the air:: – BOLTON!!!!
It can be tough in some cases to determine where this is happening, though. And, to be fair, newspapers aren’t the sort of place for this long-form content.
Hoodie
@Betty Cracker: Generally speaking, the sorority/frat sectors of large public universities, particularly those in the south, tend to turn out a lot of this type. Interesting to see that Mary Trump says uncle Donald got a ringer to take his SAT to get into Wharton, which might take some of the sting away.
Eunicecycle
@Sab: The situation your stepdaughter was in was so sad; I’m sure her mother would have kept her if she could have. With the opiate problem so bad in my county, we were starting to see lots of children whose parents couldn’t take care of them. Not the same as having MS, obviously, but the kids just couldn’t understand. And we spoke the same language. It breaks my heart to think of the children in cages with no one to comfort them at all. The damage cannot be undone.
J R in WV
@Kropacetic:
I’m a retired state IT worker living on our hermitage up a hollow, and I know that both the markets and the vaster American economy ALWAYS does better during Democratic administrations than they do during Republican administrations since economic data has been tracked. I’m sure the reasons for that economic success for Democratic management are many and complex, but we don’t need to understand all the underlying complexities to know what that means.
It means Republicans do a shitty job of running the nation , and Democrats do a comparatively professional job, every time. Anyone working on Wall Street or for any financial corporation who isn’t aware of that fact, and it is a stone cold fact, is not qualified to hold their job. Not at all. Should be a drive-through bank teller, although that is probably technically beyond their capability.
Martin
@Felanius Kootea: Nah. The GOP only values loyalty to the cause. Kissinger is not only a member in good standing, but admired.
So long as they are loyal to the cause, they have a job. Billionaires need lots of ideological fluffers and that’s all these people are. The problem with Trumps ‘I could shoot someone on 5th avenue’ statement wasn’t that it was wrong, or amoral, or shocking, it’s that it revealed a truth that was not to be said out loud.
Hurt the right people, and you will be well cared for.
And honestly, the biggest argument for me against wealth inequality isn’t the disparity in wealth – we can lift up the poor without meaningfully dragging down the rich. It’s that there should be consequences to being a sociopathic fascist, but if you have enough money, there aren’t any. And what’s more, you can build an army around your sociopathic fascism who also can’t be held accountable.
I don’t inherently dislike Elon Musk, but he’s a slightly bonkers guy who has 100% control of a company with a demonstrated capability to strike any place on earth from orbit. I personally believe nobody should be able to get that close to becoming a Bond villain.
Ladyraxterinok
@Betty Cracker:
I was a visiting prof there 65-66.
Learned Gainesville has 4 syllables
.And temp can hit in 80s before 8am!
J R in WV
@Kropacetic:
Also, when you say “They’ll go after those pushing hardest to reign in the financial sector first.” the word you want is “rein in,” as in a horse. The word “reign” refers to royalty ruling over a nation-state.
/pedant mode, no offense intended, homonyms are hard.
Captain C
So, kind of like Chris Moltisanti with the SEC exam in The Sopranos.
Kropacetic
I question the motives of some of these people too (obviously). To some extent, sure, it’s ideological. But what it really comes down to is regulation.
Honest investors and other assorted honest businessfolk shouldn’t have to worry so much. The thought leaders pushing this shit don’t want the government preventing them from ripping off clients, doing risky things with investments that put the broader public at risk, and abusing employees or the environment.
Kropacetic
Haha, you know what? I know that. I’m pretty sure I typically get it right. Problem is that as soon as I dismissed “rain” I said to myself “caught the error, no need for further examination.”
SMH.
Betty Cracker
@Ladyraxterinok: Ha! True about the syllables. :)
Matt McIrvin
@J R in WV: They don’t want the economy to do better, they just want to be able to loot it more effectively.
Rich people live like kings in a depression. They can have hordes of desperate servants at their beck and call.
Martin
@Baud: I like Maddow because the other members of my household need the windup. Politics is very contextual. If you don’t understand the history of the moment, then the commentary on the moment is bewildering.
The whole point of politics is to take so called ‘low information voters’, which really is all of us in some capacity or another, and control the context in which you present some new idea so that it sounds reasonable. In order to have any independence as a voter, you need to understand the history and the broader context outside of that space. And that’s hard – it takes a lot of work because it always necessitates deprogramming something you internalized and paying a LOT of attention to things. Maddow helps with that process. But for those of us who understand the context, it sure looks rambly and remedial.
John Revolta
@Ladyraxterinok: Is it Ga-ayns-a-ville, or Gayns-a-vill-a?
misterpuff
@Kropacetic:
Of course, history shows us the market and the economy does better with a Dem administration. But watch any financial news show and the word will be “Regulations” = Bad for Business. Yet somehow Business does quite well under such an Anti-business climate.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
And stick to the local hot dogs. The burgers are kind’a … funky.
:)
Betty Cracker
@John Revolta: It’s more like “Ga-yuns-vee-yull.”
MisterForkbeard
@Baud: IIRC, Adam doesn’t like her because she gets too indepth into military and security matters she doesn’t understand and gets things wrong. Little things that ultimately end up mattering a lot.
John Revolta
@Betty Cracker: Much obliged. I’m supposed to be moving to SC one of these days and I don’t wanna stick out too much!
Shana
@bemused: Several years ago in our rather nice suburb of DC when one of my kids was still a toddler we had a neighbor with one child, around 3 years old. There were a bunch of kids around the same age and lots of the moms were still home so we’d get together for occasional playdates. One day the mother of the little boy related a story of how her son had thrown a screaming fit because the family’s cleaning service had sent as part of the crew a woman of color. At the age of 3 this child had been so indoctrinated with racism that he refused to even be in the house if a Black woman was there.
The mom, in relating this story didn’t seem particularly uncomfortable admitting the racism, just embarrassed that her son hadn’t hidden it better. Granted it was about 23 years ago so some of my recollections may be a bit fuzzy, but I think we all (the other mothers) did some gently questioning to make sure we understood what she was saying and trying to understand why she was telling this. It still amazes me after all these years that she was so casual about relating the story. She clearly thought she was among a group who would sympathize with her “plight.”
None of us ever included her in playdate invitations again and they sold their house and moved about a year later.
dopey-o
The nut of the Kids In Cages caper was the deliberate lack of a database to keep track of family members. It’s not cutting edge computer science, and i have no doubt that Oracle or Microsoft couldn’t have delivered a solution in a week or less, if anyone in the White House had bothered to pick up the phone.
Drump et al never intended to re-unite the stolen children with their families. Their message was “If you come to America, you will never see your children again.” If the only tool you have is cruelty , you can get really good at it.
dopey-o
Republicans don’t govern the nation when in power. They preside over the looting. For the benefit of the 1 – 5% whom they view as their constituents.
Gretchen
@MisterForkbeard: no, Soboroff has been reporting this almost daily in print, on twitter, and on tv. He just put all the reporting together in a book.
Jinchi
The subtext is that her family are telling her what she’s done is monstrous and she couldn’t care less. I believe Steve Miller’s family is similarly horrified by him. I’ve got a few Trumpsters in my family, but nobody as contemptible as those two.
dww44
@Baud: IMO while she still has a long introductory piece it’s rarely redundant and slow. I’ve found almost all of them enlightening and informative and she’s focusing on things that matter
dww44
@Kropacetic: there was a guy on CNBC today who said that while Trump is an absolutely horrible human he did get the recent stimulus right. I could argue that that wasn’t all Trump’s doing. This investment guy also opined at length about Dems who believe in socialist capitalism. These investment types Do Not Care about saving our democracy Certsinly not at the expense of their potential profits. We need some effective counter punchers who have a microphone.
Kropacetic
It was barely at all Trump’s doing. He didn’t craft it, he would have had no idea what to do on his own. All he did was pick up a sharpie and sign it after it got Congressional Republican approval.