The “bullshit-artist/liar-in-chief”…

from The Washington Post…

EDITORIAL: Lie No. 10,000 is really a whopper

No, Mr. President, ending family separations was not a “disaster”.

By THE WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL BOARD | 7:19PM EDT — Monday, April 29, 2019

President Donald J. Trump on the White House grounds on April 26. — Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post.

AS President Trump zoomed past a lowly personal milestone — his 10,000th false or misleading statement in his 27-month-old presidency, according to The Washington Post Fact Checker — he let fly a series of whoppers on a subject that logic would suggest he'd be better off leaving unremarked: family separation. The president, whose own administration imposed and then rescinded a systematic policy of wrenching migrant children from their parents, with no protocol in place to reunite them, now poses as a paragon of compassion that ended cruel laws in place before he took office. This is false.

During an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Mr. Trump suggested that his heartless policy had continued practices in place under the Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations, among others. In contrast to his predecessors, Mr. Trump said, “we've been on a humane basis … we go out and stop the separations,” he said. “The problem is you have 10 times as many people coming up with their families. It's like Disneyland now.”

In fact, the “zero tolerance” policy was formulated (with White House approval) by Mr. Trump's then-attorney general, Jeff Sessions. The policy mandated automatic imprisonment for undocumented adult asylum seekers apprehended at the border, meaning migrant children would be seized from their parents' custody and transferred for placements scattered around the country by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Several thousand parents and children were left with no means of contacting each other and no documents to facilitate their eventual reunification. It was an act of singular cruelty by an administration that has not shied from demonstrating malice toward migrants.

Neither Mr. Obama nor Mr. Bush prosecuted policies remotely similar to Mr. Trump's. While families were occasionally separated before Mr. Trump entered office, it was generally when there was reason to believe the parents posed a threat to their children. And when the Justice Department announced what it called a “new” policy that separated families a year ago, officials justified it as a response to a surge in undocumented Central American migrants crossing the border.

The resulting national uproar forced Mr. Trump's about-face, which he now seems to regret. During the interview on Sunday, he called the policy's revocation a “disaster” and blamed it for what he called a tenfold increase in migrant families apprehended after crossing the border. In fact, the increase has been closer to sixfold, which is bad enough — and at least partly a testament to the panic among Central American migrants seeking to enter the country before Mr. Trump fixes on some new draconian course of action.

In the meantime, the damage caused by the policy of separation persists. In court papers filed this month, the administration said it hoped it would take no more than six more months to identify the remaining children and match them with their parents — but said it could take as long as two years. Thus has the administration fused inhumanity with incompetence.

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• Editorials represent the views of The Washington Post as an institution, as determined through debate among members of the Editorial Board. The board includes: Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt; Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jackson Diehl; Deputy Editorial Page Editor Ruth Marcus; Associate Editorial Page Editor Jo-Ann Armao, who specializes in education and District affairs; Jonathan Capehart, who focuses on national politics; Lee Hockstader, who writes about immigration, and political and other issues affecting Virginia and Maryland; Charles Lane, who concentrates on economic policy, trade and globalization; Stephen Stromberg, who specializes in energy, the environment, public health and other federal policy; David Hoffman, who writes about foreign affairs and press freedom; Molly Roberts, who focuses on technology and society; and editorial cartoonist Tom Toles. Op-ed editors Michael Larabee, Robert Gebelhoff and Mark Lasswell; letters editor Jamie Riley; international opinions editors Elias Lopez, Karen Attiah and Christian Caryl; international opinions writer Jason Rezaian; digital opinions editor James Downie; operations editor Becca Clemons; editor and writer Christine Emba; and digital producer and writer Mili Mitra also take part in board discussions. The board highlights issues it thinks are important and responds to news events, mindful of stands it has taken in previous editorials and principles that have animated Washington Post editorial boards over time. Articles in the news pages sometimes prompt ideas for editorials, but every editorial is based on original reporting. News reporters and editors never contribute to editorial board discussions, and editorial board members don't have any role in news coverage.

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