Watch Trump official say caged children don't need soap, toothbrushes, or beds to be "safe and sanitary" [UPDATED]

Plus, in the picture the quote states apartheid IS legal, which shows how old it is. Now it isn’t legal. Things do, and have to, change.

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I just hope that can happen without the US and the west tearing itself apart - something which seems ever more remote by the day…

[ETA] I’ll put this behind a blur but people should see it…

Those are real human beings, not abstract, legal arguments. Real people.

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But rational immigration control advocates aren’t arguing that every asylum seeker should have their child ripped away. Pointing to the fact that some assholes want to use cruelty as a deterrent and then extending that to all people who are an atom’s-width to the right of you is just as dishonest.

Edit: To be clear, I’m not saying that’s what you are doing, but there are many comments in this very thread that are.

No. THAT IS WHAT IS HAPPENING.

Again. THAT IS WHAT IS HAPPENING. Right now. This very moment, it is what is happening.

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Of course it is. It’s abhorrent, and we should stop it. I’ve said that several times throughout this thread. I’m on your side, much though you may not like it.

I just happen to think it’s better if we tell the truth about this stuff. Presenting this video without the full context doesn’t serve our purposes. There’s fucking plenty of horrific video, pictures, etc. that are from the here and now, and are directly related to Trump-admin policies and those policies ALONE. We don’t need to muddy the waters with this Obama-era case. It just makes us look ill-informed, and gives conservatives ammunition and/or an excuse to ignore us.

Just because there is a narrow legal reason she’s doing what she’s doing, she doesn’t have to defend it. Nit picking what this individual lawyer is doing will not stop it. Mass action will stop it. It SHOULD HAVE been happening since it started.

That’s why I posted the Hannah Arendt image - the banality of evil and all that.

It’s part of the larger picture and entirely accurate. Just because it’s ramped up under Trump doesn’t mean we should not point out the inhumanity of the larger set of policies. We go after the policy, not the individual administration. Putting children in cages is and will always be entirely wrong.

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Your right to representation is only in criminal cases, and the point of that right is that you have to contend with the power and weight of the government. The idea of turning that around that saying the government is entitled to a vigourous defense in a civil matter is absurd.

If you want to go bureaucrat I’d say that this argument was a desperate waste of public funds, as they should have settled the suit rather than throwing a hail mary that the judge would agree that toothbrushes weren’t part of being “sanitary”. It’s an utterly stupid argument to make, and the public is paying for it not just in this lawyer’s salary but also by paying for the judge’s time and all their support staff, plus keeping the lights on in the court room. All that so someone could spout evil idiocy about how badly we can treat children in custody. The rule of law does not depend on that.

If your point is that the full weight of the responsibility for this evil stupidity doesn’t really fall on this one person’s shoulders then I agree there is plenty of blame to go around. If your point is that they deserve none of the blame, that’s nuts. Of course you deserve blame when you do your job badly, and of course you deserve blame when you “just follow orders” you way into defending child cruelty.

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Show me the Trump-supporting Republicans who are protesting this cruel treatment of asylum seekers and I’ll reevaluate my opinion.

Until then fuck those fascist goons and their enablers all the way to hell.

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No prob. Take a listen to the latest episode of National Review’s editors roundtable, if you want to hear what the center-right actually think about the immigration debate. Give particular attention to what David French says.

David French is not pro-Trump, or Republican:

Potential 2016 U.S. presidential campaign[edit]

In January 2016, French said that he would vote for Donald Trump if he became the Republican nominee; he later changed his mind and said he would not vote for Trump.[11][12] Political commentator Bill Kristol, a supporter of the Stop Trump movement, named French as his choice to run for U.S. President as an independent conservative candidate to defeat presumptive Republican nominee Trump on May 31.[13] On June 5, French announced that he had considered running, but ultimately decided not to.[14][15] In a June 18, 2016 interview with The Daily Herald , French revealed that he had strongly considered entering the presidential race, but ultimately decided that he did not have the name recognition or the financial support to mount a viable campaign.[16]

Subsequent activities and attacks by the alt-right[edit]

French and his wife and family were the subject of online attacks when he criticized President Donald Trump and the alt-right. French was bombarded with hateful tweets—including an image of his child in a gas chamber.[17] When it was revealed French has a black daughter adopted from Ethiopia, French and his wife were referred to as “Cuckservatives” by the alt-right.[18]

French has been a consistent opponent of Donald Trump since his emergence in the 2016 presidential election. As a result of Trump’s growing influence over the GOP, in September 2018 French tweeted that he no longer considers himself a Republican.[19]

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I believe I specified Trump-supporting Republicans. David French is far to the right of me but was still part of the “Never Trump” movement.

Every Republican who supports Trump is an enabler or active supporter of cruelty for cruelty’s sake.

Every. Single. One.

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All I’m saying is, what’s the alternative? There are a whole lot of suits I want the government to vigorously defend. Show me a policy that you like (the ACA, the assault weapons ban, anything President Elizabeth Warren is able to get through congress) and I’ll show you a lawsuit that was/will be brought against it.

If you want those to be defended in courts, you have to deal with shit like this too.

There’s a typo in that Walter Williams quote. Should be “purges” not “Stalinist, Nazi, & Maoist urges.”

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For starters, maybe DON’T fight the court ruling ordering the Federal Government to provide detained children with basic amenities like soap and blankets?

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Sure, but Grammar Nazis aren’t the particular ones we’re worried about today.

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Meh… sounds too hard! /s

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Yeah, but they aren’t going to defend the ACA, they said so. It’s a choice the government makes whether to defend a case or not, there’s no obligation. Besides which one case is defending a law and the other is defending against an allegation that the government acted illegally. If the government acted illegally it should not defend itself, it should admit it’s non-compliance and make appropriate amends.

And a big part of my point is that if they really wanted to defend their policy they may have been better saying nothing at all than what they said. “Vigourous defense” does not mean going into a court room to enrage the judge by saying obviously stupid things that most people would find offensive.

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Yeah, but specifying “trump-supporting” was your addition to the conversation, not mine. What I actually said was “rational immigration-control advocates.” You’re the one who changed the terms. If you just want to argue that racists are racist, then you do you, I guess.

Again, if you want to know what the center-right actually believe on immigration, I challenge you to listen to that. If you want to hang out in a bubble and yell at a cartoon villain, go for it.

P.S. French does actually support some Trump policies. Does that make him “trump-supporting”? None of this shit’s black-and-white, and pretending otherwise is counter-productive.

I agree with everything you wrote here.