Award-winning journalist John Heilemann said that Trump and Republicans must be made to pay a price for his child separation policy by the American people voting for Democrats in November.
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Heilemann said on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House:
I have found the last week or so and particularly the last 48 hours or so, some of the most disheartening and appalling period of my entire adult life covering politics and watching what’s been happening in this what happened today is really an easy story. The president bowed to political pressure. We have not seen him do that often. We have seen many politicians do the president usually tries to push his way through. It was undeniably intense and he folded. It’s great. It should be heartening to some people that it is possible for this president to be pressured to stop from doing vile things.
At the same time, he is going to and is already trying to have it both ways. We have seen him for days say, you can’t solve this with an executive order, and then sit there today on television and say, hey, I have an executive order. He has pitched himself as the villain in a way that he likes for days. Yesterday when he used the phrase infestation, it called to mind — it was basically saying immigrants, people who come to this country are vermin. That’s what he’s saying. It’s the language of white nationalist, splinter hard right crazy town parties. And we have haven’t heard it in our politics in a long time. We’ve heard it in our politics in history, but not in a while. He’s going to go — he’s going to use that language between now and November because he thinks it works with the part of his group, of his base.
He’s also going to try to be a hero and say what he said today. Oh, compassion, the word I like how he talked about the word compassion. Can’t actually express compassion. It has something to do with the word compassion. It is our job in the press and also the job of Democrats to not let the president have it both ways on this issue and to make sure that he can’t be both. You can’t just do this thing and then stand up and say, oh, hey, I’m now the hero, I have compassion. Huh-uh, you can’t go around talking about people like they’re vermin, you can’t inflict this kind of policy on Americans and not pay a political price.
We have a great chance to inflict one on him and his party in November. Meaning the Democrat party. I’m not part of the democratic party, but people who object to this policy, which I think is a lot of people beyond the democratic party have a chance to make the president and his party pay a price and they the press needs to hold him accountable and not let him slide away from this the next course of days and let this happen.
It’s about reminding Trump that this is America
Heilemann isn’t someone who gets up on the partisan soapbox, but what Trump did transcends partisanship. It also goes beyond the regular boundaries of journalism. It is important for journalists to report the facts, but when a president and his administration violate human rights by ripping children away from their parents, there is a basic human and moral duty to speak out. Heilemann was speaking as a human being.
Trump and his Republican enablers need to pay for their abuse of children.
Donald Trump doesn’t get to play to his racist base, then sign an executive order and proclaim himself the good guy.
It doesn’t matter what or no political party one considers themselves a member of. As Americans, we must hold Trump accountable and make him pay, and the GOP pay in November.
For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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