The national media have focused intense pressure on President Trump and the administration’s “zero tolerance” border enforcement policy by weaponizing pictures and audio of distraught families in illegal immigrant detention centers.
But so far, the media onslaught doesn’t seem to have fazed Trump at all.
Amid calls from Democrats to stand down from his border policy, and with even some Republicans mulling a quick, narrow fix to end family separation, Trump told Republicans Tuesday night to pass a broad immigration bill that funds his wall, provides a solution for Dreamers, and also prevents children from being split from their parents or guardians.
Trump’s message signaled that he wants to maintain his tough border stance, despite ceaseless press coverage that declared his position to be a disaster.
The New York Times editorial board on Monday night called the issue “a horror show” and called the zero tolerance policy “insane.”
Jeff Zeleny, a reporter for CNN, asked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at Monday’s White House press briefing how family separations didn’t amount to “child abuse.”
“How is this not specifically child abuse for these innocent children who are indeed being separated from their parents?” he asked as he cited reports showing the detention facilities where children are being held.
Nielsen maintained that family separations were also conducted under the Obama and Bush administrations, though to a lesser extent. She also said that the children are provided meals, entertainment, and healthcare, and she stressed it was up to Congress to “fix” the separation issue by passing legislation.
Some media figures have gone so far as to directly compare the family separations under Trump to the Holocaust and slavery in America.
“We are treating people as less than human,” author and frequent cable news political commentator Jon Meacham said Tuesday on MSNBC. “We are in a pre-Civil War mindset about people and we know how that turned out.”
CNN national security analyst and former CIA Director Michael Hayden said Saturday on Twitter, “Other governments have separated mothers and children,” and attached to the tweet he included a black-and-white photograph of Auschwitz.
Frequent Trump critic Joe Scarborough of MSNBC said on his show Friday that it’s “just like the Nazis” when the children are separated from their parents, who attempted illegal entry into the U.S.
Several Republicans in Congress and former first lady Laura Bush have also been highly critical of the separations.
But despite the relentless incoming fire, Trump showed no sign on Tuesday of giving in.
During remarks Tuesday in Washington in front of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, Trump hammered back at critics of his administration’s border enforcement, saying that the goal is to stop gang members, drugs, and human traffickers from entering the U.S.
As he often does, he accused the media of unfairly and inaccurately covering the immigration issue, calling reporters in the room “the fake news media.”
“They are helping these smugglers and these traffickers like nobody would believe,” Trump said of the media. “They know it, they know exactly what they’re doing and it should be stopped because what’s going on is very unfair to the people of our country.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said at a press conference later in the day that Republicans were willing to pass legislation that would ensure families were kept intact.
Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., suggested, however, his party may not go along, saying that “the president can do it with his own pen.”
