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.