honestly, the diversion of this thread into ridiculous and jejune accusations of sexual crimes and innuendoes does no justice to the actual topic, which is of grave importance in current affairs.

Elizabeth Warren yesterday read from the Mueller Report on the floor for 45 minutes and then called for Trump's impeachment. I think she is correct, and that impeachment proceedings ought to be commenced for lying and obstruction of justice, even if the prospects of securing the resignation of the President are remote. The behaviour this individual has engaged in is a threat to the constitutional integrity of the United States and can't be left unchallenged. As always, the obsequious fawning and obfuscation of the GOP and in particular Speaker McConnell, are likewise a disgrace to the office and threat to the integrity of the nation.

As far as separating families, Obama did the same. Obama also put kids in cages. You could look it up. — fishfry

I looked it up:

"Under past administrations, some border-crossers were occasionally prosecuted, and were thus separated from their families. Children were separated from parents when authorities had concerns for their well-being or could not confirm that the adult was in fact their legal guardian. Prosecution was more common in cases with more severe crimes, like drug-running. ...

"The main difference between Trump and Obama, as both experts noted, centers on how they handled immigrants caught near the US-Mexico border. Under Obama, the Justice Department was given broad discretion on who should face criminal charges, and federal prosecutors rarely went after families.
But in April, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Justice Department would prosecute 100% of illegal border-crossers in a policy known as "zero-tolerance." Adults went to jails and awaited criminal proceedings. Children were sent to detention centers run by the Department of Health and Human Services, and some were eventually placed in foster care."

Trump's zero-tolerance policy treated all border-crossers as criminals, which resulted in separating children from parents whose only crime was crossing the border.

"Under past administrations ..., — Relativist

LOL. Fact-check from Trump-hating Wapo. https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/09/politics/fact-check-trump-claim-obama-separated-families/index.html?no-st=1557361075

Here's one of Obama's kid cages.



But again, completely off the point. Someone claimed that Trump did "unspeakable" thinks to their family. That's a lie. A politician implementing a policy you don't happen to like is not an "unspeakable" personal attack on your family. The person who made that claim has been unable to back it up and lacks the integrity to withdraw their hyperbole.

My heartfelt advice to people who viscerally hate Trump would be to get the DNC to pick a better candidate next time. Hillary was a corrupt, incompetent warmonger disliked by most Americans. Or as Obama said in 2008, "You're likable enough, Hillary." Ouch! Remember that Trump's 2016 campaign against Hillary was virtually the same as Obama's in 2008. Label her corrupt and unlikable, call out her support for the Iraq war. Obama wrote the playbook and won with it. Trump read Obama's playbook and won with it.

To win an election, run a better candidate. That's politics. Not every election you lose is a direct attack on you personally.

LOL. Fact-check from Trump-hating Wapo. https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/09/politics/fact-check-trump-claim-obama-separated-families/index.html?no-st=1557361075 — fishfry

Genetic fallacy to reject a claim because of a prejudice you (and Trump) have against them. Show that it's false (good luck with that).

Regarding the picture you showed, it's discussed here. The Obama administration had to deal with a short term sudden influx of unaccompanied minors, and they had to deal with it somehow. In Trump's case, it was a situation caused by his policy.

To be an American is to accept that being (an American) as an act of family. Therefore every vicious, obscene, disgusting action of his as President hurts my family. His sheer incompetence in international affairs hurts my family too. And if it encourages adventurism on the part or any of the worlds despots, that hurts you and your family too. His manifest racism. His abuse of power. his lying, his unlawfulness, his corruption. his attempts to dismantle public safety nets. He is simply a toxic, evil excuse for an imitation of a man. By harm are you looking for broken bones or bruises or black eyes? That has not happened to the handful of people I call family. But each of them, and me, and you, and your family live in a meaner, nastier, and more dangerous world because of him. That's called harm. Oh, and I forgot. If you believe he had nothing to do with Russians, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.

As far as separating families, Obama did the same. — fishfry

Seriously, you cannot tell the difference between Donald Trump and Barack Obama?

As far as separating families, Obama did the same.
— fishfry

Seriously, you cannot tell the difference between Donald Trump and Barack Obama? — tim wood

In terms of the crisis on the border? The main difference is the way the MSM ignored Obama's 2014 humanitarian disaster on the border and politicized Trump's. FWIW -- since someone earlier asked about my personal life -- I formerly lived in Mexico for several years and follow border issues with great interest. No, I do not see much substantive difference between Obama's clusterfuck on the border and Trump's.

I have a number of other mentions on political topics. I hope nobody minds if I don't reply to those. I find political conversations here futile. "Seriously, you cannot tell the difference between Donald Trump and Barack Obama?" That's disingenuous.

Political conversations are tedious when they are so unserious. Political philosophy is not political advocacy. People who viscerally hate Trump and who can't see beyond that are missing a lot. In this case the past several decades of bipartisan failed immigration policy leading directly to today's crisis. If all you know is Orange Man Bad you just can't even think. I see so much of this lately.

The main difference is the way the MSM ignored Obama's 2014 humanitarian disaster on the border — fishfry

Obama's immigration policies, from border control to deportation were widely covered across the media. A simple google search would show that. However unlike Trump, Obama never called Latin Americans "rapists", "vermin", or that they were "invading" or "pouring in the country", "diseased" or other de-humanizing rhetoric that have lead to increased anti-immigrant sentiment to the point now where citizen-formed militia have been detaining immigrant families along the borders by the hundreds, and which a member of the militia suggested that they should just "shoot them up" or that "we have to go back to Hitler days and put them all in a gas chamber." Obama also never entertained the possibility that George Soros was funding a migrant caravan, driving white supremacists to fear that whites were being replaced by non-whites and that the Jews were to blame, ultimately leading to the most violent antisemitic attack on US soil. Additionally, while Obama did split families within the nation through policies that increased deportation, Obama did not split families who were crossing the border (they were detained together, then deported together). The Trump administration introduced the zero-tolerance policy of deporting immigrating parents back to their home countries while detaining the children in concentration camps, with shoddy means to return them. In fact, it's very likely that many of these families will never be reunited since there weren't systematic means to track families.

Political conversations are only impossible when the other interlocutor, such as yourself, is completely clueless.

I'm pretty sure this has been explained to you multiple times Fishfry, so I have to ask: are you an actual fish? Does your memory last for five seconds?

However unlike Trump, Obama never called Latin Americans "rapists", — Maw

Confusing rhetoric with policy. I get that you don't like Trump's style. Obama deported record numbers of undocumented immigrants. You could look it up. Perfect illustration of why I won't participate in these insipid political discussions. Obama's actual record on border issues was awful. He always had great rhetoric. And a jump shot.

Your statement that Trump called Latin Americans rapists is a lie, of course. You could look up the quote. Orange Man Bad. Not conducive to thought.

Here's a little light reading to bring interested readers up to speed on Obama's reality versus rhetoric on immigration.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obamas-deportation-policy-numbers/story?id=41715661

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/obama-record-deportations-deporter-chief-or-not

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/08/trump-deportations-behind-obama-levels-241420

You're straw manning up the ying yang. Nobody here made issue with the number of deported but the treatment of immigrants. Obama deported illegal immigrants that were convicted criminals (which is explained in the first article you linked!) and only separated adults from children if ICE thought they were a danger to the children or if they were convicted felons or caught in a criminal act (drug running). Trump criminalised border crossings causing a split of families in every instance, which up to then was dealt with as a civil procedure not requiring the seperation of families because they could be detained together. Equivocating the two as basically the same is rather missing the point spectacularly.

I do note this, ‘yeah, Trump is bad. But what about Obama! What about Clinton! They’re so much worse than even him, but the Liberal Media can’t admit it, because they’re biased’.

Which is just more Trumpian bollocks, of which there is an endless supply.

I get that you don't like Trump's style. — fishfry

Do you like Trump's style, of inciting hatred for the purpose of political advantage? I recognize that there is a style of "attack" which has become prevalent in politics, to focus on the weaknesses and wrongs of the other party, because it produces political advantage. But it also incites hatred which leads to division within the nation. Trump takes the "attack" to a new level, utilizing the divisions (national borders) already in place, to incite hatred of the others for the purpose of political gain. As if this were the way to produce a great nation.

Confusing rhetoric with policy. I get that you don't like Trump's style. Obama deported record numbers of undocumented immigrants. You could look it up. Perfect illustration of why I won't participate in these insipid political discussions. Obama's actual record on border issues was awful. He always had great rhetoric. And a jump shot. — fishfry

You show your hand there by cutting out the remainder of my post which shows how Trump's rhetoric has produced tangible consequences. In that respect, his dehumanizing rhetoric cannot be so casually divorced from his policies which stem from the same white supremacist ideology that his rhetoric is predicated upon. You also straight ignore the fact that Trump is separating families at the border and Obama didn't.

Orange Man Bad. Not conducive to thought. — fishfry

Yeah, you're telling me.

It really seems that Trump is convinced the Mueller Report was an illegal conspiracy, intended to bring him down, and was basically a coup attempt. As Trump has no patience for, or interest in, facts as such, then nothing anyone says will ever convince him otherwise, notwithstanding that the Mueller report resulted in numerous indictments and criminal convictions, unearthing copious evidence of Russian interference with the election.

Now there are reports that Barr has commissioned an investigator to look into the origins of the Mueller report, which Trump is convinced was a consequence of illegal acts. Not hard to envisage, under Trump, an investigation, followed by a conflict between the Attorney General, the FBI, and divisions in his own Justice Department, all fueled by the mother of all conspiracy theories, namely, the one in Trump's mind, and completely disregarding of the actual fact of Russian interference in the US electoral system. Of course, Trump loves chaos, confusion, instability, division, arguments, and so on, so all grist to the mill.

(And also pause to note, again, that the only individual that Trump is ever uniformly courteous about and obsequious to, is Vladimir Putin. Everyone else are all subjected to the same barrage of tweets and insults.)

The other story of the day is that Trump believes that if impeachment proceedings were brought against him, it would actually work to his benefit. And - he's probably right! Kudos to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer for recognising this and sticking to the game plan.

I get that you don't like Trump's style.
— fishfry

Do you like Trump's style, of inciting hatred for the purpose of political advantage? — Metaphysician Undercover

No I find some of the things Trump does appalling. As I've mentioned I'm what you might call a Mexicophile. I moved to California as a young adult and always had a great affinity for Mexican culture. I travelled through country years ago and recently lived there for a few years. All things being equal I am closer to an open-borders type. I regard Mexico as a friend and neighbor. I oppose Trump's policies on Mexico and I am sickened by some of his rhetoric.

So how the hell come I am here seeming to defend Trump?

It's because I can see what Trump is doing; butwhat the Democrats have done on border issues over the past couple of decades is much worse.

Democrats talk a great game on compassion. Which frankly I appreciate because I have tremendous compassion for the plight of the people whose best hope in life is to somehow get into the United States by any means necessary.

But in order to defend themselves against political charges of being "soft on immigration," the Dems have passed some of the most harmful bills and pursued some of the most inhumane and literally inhuman policies imaginable. They passed the Secure Fence Act of 2006. I've heard "liberals" say, "Oh that's a fence, not a wall." Spare me the sanctimony.

Google some of the immigration rhetoric of Hillary, Obama, Biden, Bill Clinton. Look at the laws they passed. Go back to the 1980's. Reagan signed a huge amnesty. The Bushes as you know have close ties with Mexico both in business and in their own family. They were always good on immigration. In fact Bush proposed a very sensible program of immigration reform. The right of course rejects any talk of immigration reform so they objected; and the left hated anything that came out of Bush's mouth (with very good reason of course) and so Bush's actually pretty good idea quickly disappeared.

Bill Clinton was tough on immigration. Obama deported records of Mexicans and hardened the border. All to placate the right so he could get his domestic programs through.

And the drug war. 100,000 Mexicans died between 2000 and 2010 in a bloody drug war down there. Financed by US Democrats like Hillary and my own California Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is called by the right a "liberal" but who is the most bloodthirsty warmonger and opponent of civil liberties in the Senate. She votes for the wars and her husband profits. You could look it up. Don't get me started on DiFi.

US government financial aid to Mexico was conditioned on the money being used to fight the drug war. As if Mexico "pushes" drugs on the US. On the contrary it's spiritually sick Americans who smoke, shoot, snort, and pop every mind-numbing substance known to man in order to cope.

You don't know about the American backing of the bloody drug war in Mexico run by powerful Democratic politicians because Rachel Maddow didn't tell you about it. You could Google it.

I can't give you chapter and verse on every dirty deed the Dems did in the past 30 years because this is a forum post and not a book that needs to be written. The Dems funded all the surveillance and interior checkpoints (awful violation of the Constitution) and the militarization of the border to buy off the Republicans who wanted tough action. So it got harder and harder and harder to cross the border. Migrants had to go farther out into the desert.

In the meantime the same Dems pass sanctuary city laws (which I happen to support). What is the net result?

We leave people to die of thirst in the desert. And if they make it through, we give them drivers licenses, job, legal protection.

What kind of fucked up immoral system is that?

So when someone says, Oh Trump said something awful; or that his policies are awful, you get no argument from me. It only seems that way.

It's that when you tell me that Trump personally injured your family because he "caged children." GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK.. Obama caged children. The big joke is that the caged children meme got started because someone tweeted a photo of kids in cages and said they were Trump's cages. But the photo was from 2014 and was one of Obama's cages.

If you don't separate the families then you will be turning kids over to traffickers. Obama had documented cases of that and plenty more that were not documented. Better optics than separating the kids from the adult to find out who's a family member and who's a trafficker.

"Trump put kids in cages" is a slogan, not an actual thought.

Or when you tell me that "Oh he called Mexicans rapists."

Bill and Hillary Clinton and Obama and Biden and Pelosi and DiFi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer -- all the big "centrist" Dems of the past 20 years -- passed laws that damn near destroyed Mexico.

And now it's all Trump did a bad thing and Trump said a bad thing and that's all you want to know?

I have three words for that kind of thinking. Ignorant. Disingenuous. Childish.

Ok this has all been on my mind for a few days. This is how it came out tonight. I wish I could write the book. I can document everything. It's all well known. I'm not letting the GOPs off the hook but frankly only half the GOP hate the immigrants, the social cons. The business-oriented GOPs love the cheap labor. And of course when it's illegal the workers can't complain if you don't pay them.

So it's a sick, depraved, hypocritical, inhuman, inhuman, and evil system we've developed over the southern border. It's bipartisan but the Dems have been much worse because at least the Bush family regards Mexico as a friend. I for one would like to see some meaningful immigration reform in my lifetime.

But "Oooh Trump put kids in cages" and "Trump called Mexican rapists."

Yeah. Those things are true. And so is a lot more. So stop throwing out slogans as if this is the politics forum on Craigslist. Try to see beyond your angry emotions. I get you don't like Trump. Try to have another thought besides that.

Ok that's what I have to say about all this.

There's a simple answer to all of this: there actually is an US immigration policy, which both parties when in power adhere to.

Even if the rhetoric is naturally totally different and yes, there are small differences how the policy is nuanced. In the long run it has been quite similar. It's just like the War on Terror. Just look at how similar Obama and Bush were. Even Trump in the end is quite similar.

Trump officials say Russia is interfering. Trump shrugs.

....Members of Trump’s own administration say that Russian interference efforts are an ongoing threat. FBI Director Christopher A. Wray recently declared those efforts represent a “significant counterintelligence threat,” adding that he views Russia’s 2018 efforts as a “dress rehearsal for the big show in 2020.”

Yet Trump World’s position continues to be: No biggie. Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale recently claimed that Russia “never” helped Trump in 2016. Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner shrugged that this Russian help amounted to “a couple of Facebook ads.”

Trump World’s position is that the Mueller report totally exonerated Trump but you should ignore all its findings on the Russian sabotage effort itself, because it basically never happened. That is, ignore at least the first 50 pages, which concluded that Russian interference was “sweeping and systematic,” and included massive cybertheft directed at Democrats and disinformation warfare to socially divide the country.

Barr is more or less in on this, too. He just had an interview with Fox News and validated Trump’s theory that the early Russia investigation might have been about hobbling Trump. Barr is carrying out Trump’s lawless command to investigate the investigators, implicitly downgrading the legitimacy of an investigation into a foreign attack on our political system.
...

[As Mueller documented] Trump actively and extensively encouraged the Russian attack, hyping WikiLeaks’ findings countless times. His campaign eagerly sought to coordinate with that attack. Trump went to enormous lengths to impede the investigation into it. He and his advisers repeatedly lied to cover up all the dimensions of that broader story.

Now, Trump World’s position is basically that the attack never happened, and the White House position is that [the Democrats'] further fleshing out Mueller’s conclusions about it, to do something about the next one, isn’t a legitimate legislative purpose — even though Trump’s own intelligence officials are waving red flags about it.

How can this really be the position of the White House and the president of the United States?

WaPo

Mueller didn't discover anything.

No one is denying that the Democrats have been bad on immigration for nearly 30 years at least, but the reason we are focusing on Trump is because he has been president for over two years, and immigration has been his primary clarion call. All @fishfry is doing is pure whataboutism.

Earning your name again ;-)

Earning your name again ;-) — Wayfarer

:grin: Mueller didn't discover anything.

Finally a gutsy Republican Congressman, Justin Amash, has stated that he believes there are grounds for impeachment in the Mueller findings.

Citing “multiple examples of conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice” uncovered in the Mueller report, the iconoclastic Michigan lawmaker spared no one in a lengthy Twitter thread on Saturday—calling out Trump, Attorney General William Barr, and other lawmakers he says put partisanship above their own allegiance to the Constitution.

While impeachment should be undertaken only in extraordinary circumstances, the risk we face in an environment of extreme partisanship is not that Congress will employ it as a remedy too often but rather that Congress will employ it so rarely that it cannot deter misconduct. Our system of checks and balances relies on each branch’s [sic] jealously guarding its powers and upholding its duties under our Constitution. When loyalty to a political party or to an individual trumps loyalty to the Constitution, the Rule of Law — the foundation of liberty — crumbles. — Amash

Hopefully there are one or two more with some remaining vestige of conscience and principle who will stick their heads over the parapet.

Trump's zero-tolerance policy treated all border-crossers as criminals, which resulted in separating children from parents whose only crime was crossing the border. — Relativist

I'm not defending Trump's immigration policies, since in fact I oppose them.

I'm simply calling attention to, and expressing my deep frustration with, the bipartisan decades-long legacy of bad decision making and bad policy that's resulted in a terribly inhumane and indecent situation. And if ALL you can see is "Trump separated families," I can only repeat that I find that kind of thinking ignorant (if you simply don't know anything about US immigration policy), disingenuous (if you do, but pretend not to for partisan purposes); and in any event, childish. Yes Trump's border policy sucks. But both parties are to blame for how the situation got to this point. So ignorance doesn't help here. Nor does it convince me that you are trying to make a serious point about immigration.

ps --

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/dna-tests-reveal-30-of-suspected-fraudulent-migrant-families-were-unrelated

They did a pilot program where they DNA-tested illegal border crossers with kids. 30% of the kids didn't belong to the parents. They also busted a ring of criminals recycling kids to act as family members.

So say you are in charge of US border policy. When adults bring kids across the border and say they're family, do you decree that "OK, come on in?" Or do you separate the families until you can determine who is a loving parent and who is a child trafficker?

Come on, please give me an honest answer. You're in charge of policy. What do you do?

No one is denying that the Democrats have been bad on immigration for nearly 30 years at least, but the reason we are focusing on Trump is because he has been president for over two years, and immigration has been his primary clarion call. All fishfry is doing is pure whataboutism. — Maw

I disagree that this is mere whataboutism. When Trump haters tweet out a photo of "Trump's child cages" that actually turn out to have been Obama's, I am entitled to call out the hypocrisy. When you fixate on Trump's awful rhetoric on Mexico and compare it to Obama's actual record on Mexico, you find that on balance, if you're a man from Mars, you would conclude that Obama did far more damage to the US-Mexican border than Trump has. You don't like Trump's style. Well yes Obama had great style. And did a lot of damaging things. Obama's border policy was awful. Obama's malfeasance on the border has led to the humanitarian and political disaster we have now. And yes Trump's rhetoric's made it worse. But that doesn't mean you can say that and then stop thinking. Try to have TWO thoughts. Orange Man Bad, ok. Now try to have ANOTHER thought as well.

Here's another example from only two days ago. Trump gave a speech and said something sensible -- or at least arguably sensible -- about immigration. He said we should prioritize merit instead of family ties.

This is a perfectly sensible statement, even if you don't agree with it. One can make a case that a country should screen immigrants based on their potential ability to thrive or at least survive on their own in our society.

Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Speaker of the US House of Representatives, spoke out against merit.

“It is really a condescending word. They’re saying family is without merit?," Pelosi said at her weekly press conference.

...

"Are they saying most of the people who have ever come to the United States in the history of our country are without merit because they don’t have an engineering degree?" Pelosi said, drilling into the administration's argument.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/444047-pelosi-says-merit-based-immigration-is-a-condescending-word

Have any of you worked in the tech industry? The tech industry is full of H1b immigrants from India who have technical degrees in computer science and engineering. There are in fact about half a million H1b's in the country at any given time.

India is a country of 800 million people. I'm sure they could find 50 or 100 million illiterate peasants to send to the US. And why not? Does Nancy Pelosi think we should take in India's illiterate peasants? Don't their families have merit?

We import illiterate peasants and laborers from Mexico; and college educated professionals from India. Why? Because the government is helping out the farmers with farm labor, and the tech companies with tech labor.

And by the way why don't we import India's teachers? Because the teachers have a better union than the programmers.

But really, why not engineers from Mexico? Mexico has bridges, power plants, roads. Mexico has excellent engineers. But Silicon Valley isn't lobbying Congress to increase the cap on Mexican H1b engineers.

Why is this, anyway? Our immigration system makes no sense. But here is Nancy Pelosi literally denying the reality of Indian immigration of highly skilled professional workers. Why? Because]she knows that her listeners don't know shit about our actual immigration system hence don't even know about the H1b's from India; and two, she doesn't care. Pelosi knows about the H1b's because it's Congress who authorizes their presence.

Pelosi damn well knows immigration's based on merit. She and Congress agree on that fact. She just denies it in public because Trump tried to say something sensible on immigration.

I object to this level of hypocrisy. Again, if ALL you see is that "Trump called Mexicans rapists" then you are missing the evil hypocrisy in the news every single day. Do you think Nancy Pelosi is really advocating for 100 million illiterate Indian peasants to come to the US?

Or do you think she's just saying the sky is green simply because Trump said it's blue?

It's a sick joke that Pelosi mocked the idea that we'd restrict immigration to people with engineering degrees. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT WE DO and Pelosi knows it because she signs off on the legislation making it possible.

Please try to see past your dislike of Trump's style, to the bullshit emanating from literally everyone in Washington about literally everything.

If all you know is Orange Man Bad you just can't even think. — fishfry

I get it. Orange Man Bad — fishfry

Orange Man Bad. Not conducive to thought. — fishfry

Is everyone so consumed with hate against the Terrible Orange Man — fishfry

Orange Man Bad, ok. Now try to have ANOTHER thought as well. — fishfry

r u ok?

I'm simply calling attention to, and expressing my deep frustration with, the bipartisan decades-long legacy of bad decision making and bad policy that's resulted in a terribly inhumane and indecent situation. And if ALL you can see is "Trump separated families," I can only repeat that I find that kind of thinking ignorant (if you simply don't know anything about US immigration policy), disingenuous (if you do, but pretend not to for partisan purposes); and in any event, childish. Yes Trump's border policy sucks. But both parties are to blame for how the situation got to this point. So ignorance doesn't help here. Nor does it convince me that you are trying to make a serious point about immigration. — fishfry

My views are rooted in the failure to pass the Immigration Bill of 2013. It wasn't perfect, but it was a good start. It passed the Senate (14 of 46 Republicans voted for it, while all 54 Democrats did) (see this). The only reason it didn't become law was because the Tea-Party dominated House failed to pass it. This no-compromise, right-wing group are home to some of Trump's most ardent supporters (see this). What they mostly didn't like was that it granted "amnesty" to illegals. They spoke of deporting all 11 million of them. Trump the candidate even spoke of doing this.

So no, it's not just about family separations - but it IS about the intractable position of Trump and his ardent supporters - a position that is a giant step backward. Trump the candidate embraced their position from the beginning, even saying he wanted to deport all illegals. Trump stoked that Tea-Party fire with his rhetoric, rhetoric that was so extreme that Trump earned strong support from White Nationalists.

Trump's prime focus has been that wall. Had Trump been the sort of negotiator he claimed to be as a candidate, he could have gotten a lot of wall built. Dems were willing to fund the wall in 2018 in exchange for permanently taking care of the "dreamers." (See this). Trump only offered a temporary reprieve for them. He was playing to his Tea-Party+White Nationalist base.

There is no perfect solution to the Immigration issues, but positive steps could be taken if compromise were possible.

Over the four weeks between the Barr letter and the release of the redacted Mueller report, Trump kept insisting that the Mueller report said more than it did. It said, in effect: We didn’t find sufficient evidence to charge your campaign with conspiracy, and our internal Department of Justice policies forbid us from charging you with obstruction. He wanted it to say: You did nothing wrong. He wanted it to say: Actually, Donald, you were the real victim here—and Hillary Clinton the true criminal conspirator.”

Trump has tried to close that gap by lying about it—and by demanding that other people lie, too. When they don’t and won’t, Trump gets angry. And when Trump gets angry, he takes to Twitter.

...Uncheered by Mother’s Day, the president launched into a sequence of rage tweets that included the line: “The FBI has no leadership.” Trump has fired one FBI director, James Comey, for looking into the Russia matter. He fired an acting director, Andrew McCabe, for the same apparent reason. Apparently, he is now gunning for the present director, Chris Wray. 1

President Trump on Monday directed his former White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, to defy a congressional subpoena and skip a hearing scheduled for Tuesday, denying House Democrats testimony from one of the most important eyewitnesses to Mr. Trump’s attempts to obstruct the Russia investigation.

The House Judiciary Committee had subpoenaed Mr. McGahn to appear. The White House, though, presented Mr. McGahn and the committee with a 15-page legal opinion from the Justice Department stating that “Congress may not constitutionally compel the president’s senior advisers to testify about their official duties.”

“Because of this constitutional immunity, and in order to protect the prerogatives of the office of the presidency, the president has directed Mr. McGahn not to appear at the Committee’s scheduled hearing on Tuesday,” Pat A. Cipollone, the current White House counsel, wrote in a letter to the Judiciary Committee.
...
If Mr. McGahn [now an ex-employee and therefore not constrained] ... defies the White House, Mr. McGahn could not only damage his own career in Republican politics but also put his law firm, Jones Day, at risk of having the president urge his allies to withhold their business. The firm’s Washington practice is closely affiliated with the party

NY Times

That’s pretty remarkable: It is being discussed as a realistic possibility that Trump would threaten to destroy both McGahn’s career and the business prospects of his law firm if he honors a legitimate congressional subpoena designed to get to the bottom of an extraordinary accounting of corruption and wrongdoing produced by a legitimate law enforcement investigation.

Washington Post

What's next? Horse heads in beds?

My views are rooted in the failure to pass the Immigration Bill of 2013. It wasn't perfect, but it was a good start. — Relativist

I agree with everything you said and I really appreciate your post. Yes you are right, there's a hard core of GOPs that simply will not allow any immigration reform at all. Hillary was right when she said that HALF of Trump's supporters were a basket of deplorables. Trump's rhetoric on Mexico panders to that base and I'm very unhappy about that. But the Democrats pander to much the same base. You may have seen recent news stories that Biden once called for a fence to keep out drugs. Now that Trump's for it, the Dems are against it.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/10/politics/kfile-biden-drugs-fence-2006/index.html?no-st=1558569322

So no, it's not just about family separations - but it IS about the intractable position of Trump and his ardent supporters - — Relativist

I just disagree that it's only Trump and the deplorables. You can look up the immigration rhetoric of every one of the prominent Dems over the past twenty years and they're all for border enforcement and all for fences and deportations and employment verification and the militarization of the border. And when there is a humanitarian crisis consisting of a flood of central Americans, Democrats ignore it.

Just the other day Kirsten Gillibrand, a Dem candidate for president, said that if she were president she would let all families into the country without reservation, and she would trust them all to show up for their court proceedings. Statistics show that about 2% of all asylum seekers released in the country show up for their hearings. Gillibrand's rhetoric is no more serious or useful than Trump's. Does anyone want to defend importing tens or hundreds of millions of the world's illiterate peasants into the US with no restrictions at all? Many of them not families but traffickers with their victims? What kind of thoughtful policy is that?

I see both sides as actively impeding any kind of meaningful immigration reform. I just can't see it as all Trump's fault. But yes now that you mention it I do recall the 2013 bill and its scuttling by the Tea party deplorables As Trump would. say ... Sad!

r u ok? — Maw

Never better, thanks. @Wayfarer wrote a post that models the direct opposite of the "Orange man bad" school of political discourse. He didn't say, "Oooooh Trump said a bad thing about Mexicans," or "Oooooooh Trump separated families," as if turning children over to their traffickers represents a more humane policy. He wrote something intelligent. I'm incredibly gratified that someone can discuss Trump's policies without resorting to childish emotionalism. Made my day.