The Tale of Two Donalds
“You have people in this country for 20 years, they’ve done a great job, they’ve done wonderfully, they’ve gone to school, they’ve gotten good marks, they’re productive — now we’re supposed to send them out of the country?”
Donald Trump – 2011 – Fox & Friends
聽The Donald Trump of 2011, wouldn’t even recognize the Donald Trump of today.
The old Donald Trump expressed compassion for the children of parents who brought them into this country illegally. The new Donald Trump, despite claiming he has “great love” for those children, has shown no such compassion.
Last Tuesday, he sent his tough-talking attorney general, Jeff Sessions, out to reporters to announce that the Trump administration is rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Sessions came armed with the code words, “crime,” “violence” and “terrorism.”
In effect, that means as many as 275,000 DACA recipients will lose their legal status on March 5 of next year. And the end of DACA could eventually cause the deportations of 800,000 “Dreamers.”
But what Messrs. Trump and Sessions didn’t anticipate was the widespread backlash that move would cause. (The latest POLITICO/Morning Consult poll indicates that an overwhelming number of Americans — 76 percent — are for Dreamers becoming citizens or legal residents).
Somebody should have told them that if a man drives to a bank, leaves his small children in the car while he robs it, hardly anybody would want kids to get arrested as getaway drivers or accessories to a felony. But seven months into his presidency, it appears that nobody tells Trump anything of value that he feels is worthy of his consideration.
“This is the United States of America. And we’re putting kids, young people who are contributors, in jeopardy. This is not the America we all love,” said an angry Ohio governor, John Kasich, the morning after Trump’s DACA decision.
It might not be the “America we all love,” but it’s certainly the America Donald Trump’s fervent followers (and hardly anybody else) love.
By Trump ending DACA, he’s really making good on the campaign promise to do away with Barack Obama’s stopgap effort to give hope to the children of people who brought them into the country illegally. It’s the same tired old story. If Obama did it, Trump is sure to undo it. And with this move, he’s sending the fate of Dreamers to the U.S. Congress — as if it’s not already bogged down in its own inaction.
The self-proclaimed “dealmaker” seems oblivious to the hectic legislative agenda that lies ahead. There’s Hurricane Harvey relief; tax reform; an impending battle over the debt limit; the prospects of trying to put a down payment on Trump’s “border wall”; another possible attempt to repeal and replacement of Obamacare — and now DACA.
“We have to show some compassion. We can’t just throw people out,” sounds very much like a Democrat today. But those were the words of Donald Trump on Fox News in 2012. He had a heart in those days.
He appeared to have an understanding that people who’ve lived in the United States most of their lives, and who are cautiously, but strenuously, becoming soldiers, paramedics, teachers, scientists and students will suffer personal devastation if they’re dropped at the country’s southern border — then told to fend for themselves. But not everybody in Trump’s universe feels that way.
Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, who heads Trump’s election-fraud commission, had some very blunt words for Dreamers on the day Trump handed down his decision.
“I would suggest go home and get in line, come into the United States legally, then get a green card, then become a citizen,” said Kobach.
That’s the kind of thing that the Donald Trump of 2011 and 2012 would have found appalling. Not so much today. The Donald Trump of 2017 is more inclined to placate his political base than to do what might be good for the country. Let’s just send them all home. Or let’s just send the whole thing to Congress.
Meanwhile, he’ll be on Twitter.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.