Democrats Blame Trump for Border Deaths, Accuse Administration of Deliberately “Punishing” Kids to Make a Point
Without evidence, Democrats are alleging the Trump administration is deliberately inflicting punishment and death on migrant children and their families. Predictably, the media is amplifying that narrative.
Democrats have amped up their inflammatory rhetoric in recent weeks concerning the humanitarian crisis at the border, from jumping on the false “internment camp” narrative to pushing the absurd Nazi concentration camp comparisons some members of Congress have irresponsibly thrown around over the last week.
But just when you think they couldn’t sink any lower, they did.
On Tuesday, Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Karen Bass (D-CA) made an appearance on CNN’s New Day program to discuss the crisis. During her interview, Bass didn’t just express disagreement with the administration over its immigration policies, she actually accused them of deliberately inflicting “punishment” on children at the border to get Democrats to take the border wall issue more seriously:
“You cannot tell me that the federal government does not have money for toothpaste and soap,” said Bass, a member of the Judiciary Committee and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.
“This is inflicted on children as punishment to try to bring Democrats to the table to compromise on the border wall.”
Bass went on to say that families are still being separated at the border despite President Trump’s assertion that the policy has been abandoned.
She added that the treatment of young migrants at the border is a “human rights abuse” and a “stain on our country.”
“How dare you torture children to try to get a compromise out of Democrats? I am sorry, but hearing about children walking around in soiled diapers, hearing about children taking care of toddlers, you are talking about straight-up child abuse, and I think that this needs to be condemned internationally,” she continued.
Watch the interview segment where Bass made the allegations. Note also how host Alisyn Camerota dutifully nods as Bass is talking as though she agrees with her, and also adds what sounds like Democratic talking points to the discussion to amplify Bass’s points:
Later in the day, 2020 presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke blamed President Trump for deaths at the border:
As his administration refuses to follow our laws — preventing refugees from presenting themselves for asylum at our ports of entry — they cause families to cross between ports, ensuring greater suffering & death. At the expense of our humanity, not to the benefit of our safety.
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) June 26, 2019
Predictably, the MSM walked the same line as O’Rourke. Numerous news outlets decided to publish the disturbing photo as a way of emphasizing the seriousness of the border issues, with their ultimate insinuation being that Trump is to blame for the crisis. CNN’s Brian Stelter, of course, led the way:
It is tempting to look away. I have been trying to look away from the stories about the deplorable conditions at the border camps. Babies taking care of babies. Migrants pleading for help. Maybe you have been trying to avoid it too. But we can't. https://t.co/3MWG9knkA1
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 26, 2019
CNN's @ChrisCuomo discussing the photo of a dead child and her dad: There was "debate within news organizations — whether to show it — that's not unusual. We're worried about the startling effect of this grisly reality." But the reality is, "this is terrible…" It must be seen…
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 26, 2019
On their website, Vox declared that the photo “shows the true nature of Trump’s immigration policy.”
Here are some things to keep in mind, and questions to ask, after reading the super hot takes from Democrats and their mainstream media allies on the deaths at the border and the unacceptable conditions at some of the detention centers:
1) Regarding the heartbreaking story of the migrant father and his young daughter, the AP’s reporting on this story suggested that the two of them – along with the mother – sought asylum due to the violence in El Salvador and that the father had grown frustrated with the asylum process:
According to [journalist Julia] Le Duc’s reporting for La Jornada, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, frustrated because the family from El Salvador was unable to present themselves to U.S. authorities and request asylum, swam across the river on Sunday with his daughter, Valeria.
However, a family member contradicted that narrative, according to the New York Times:
Some are fleeing gangs that cripple the region and kill wantonly. Others are seeking an economic lifeline.
Such was the case with Mr. Martínez and his wife, who left El Salvador in early April intent on starting fresh in the United States, according to Jorge Beltran, a reporter for El Diario de Hoy in El Salvador who interviewed some of the couple’s relatives.
“They went for the American dream,” Wendy Joanna Martínez de Romero, said from her home in El Salvador.
Mr. Martínez quit his job at Papa John’s, where he had earned about $350 a month. By then, his wife had already left her job as a cashier at a Chinese restaurant to take care of their daughter.
The couple lived with Mr. Martínez’s mother in the community of Altavista, a massive housing complex of tiny concrete houses east of San Salvador, according to Mr. Beltran.
Though Altavista is under the control of gangs, the couple was not fleeing from violence, Rosa Ramírez, Mr. Martínez’s mother, told him. Rather, the grind of surviving as a family on $10 a day had become unmanageable.
The reason this distinction is so important is that the initial framing of this story made it sound like the family of three were so desperate to get away from the violence in El Salvador that they were willing to risk their lives trying to cross the Rio Grande after growing frustrated by the asylum “metering” system. As it turns out, they are like so many other immigrant families who wanted to cross the border for better economic opportunities:
This is an important distinction as the narrative that’s been building so far is that the family was desperate to enter the U.S. because of “metering” — a system that puts asylum seekers in a queue to apply for asylum — was a factor in the family’s decision to attempt to cross the river rather than wait:
Unfortunately, some of the decisions they made during their journey cost two of them their lives. It is tragic, heartbreaking. But it’s no more Trump’s fault than it is President Obama’s, who also had to deal with the issue of deaths at the border from immigrants who decided to take the dangerous journey.
2) Republicans have been screaming about conditions on the ground at the border for months, practically begging Democrats to work with them on immigration reform, the wall, and much-needed funding to alleviate the humanitarian issues.
But up until the last few weeks, Democrats continuously claimed Republicans were lying about there being a crisis on the border, with some even calling it “manufactured.” The reason for their flip flop is, naturally, politics. Why won’t the mainstream media call them out on this?
3) Appalling conditions at the border existed well before Trump’s administration, so much so that even one CNN anchor has been willing to acknowledge it. They were also documented by a few scattered liberal websites at the time, and shortly after that. But the level of media outrage over the immigration situation under the Obama administration was almost non-existent, especially compared to the red alerts we’re subjected to by them on an almost daily basis on the issue now.
4) In spite of the increased number of immigrants that have attempted to cross the border during Trump’s presidency and the deportations that have followed for some, the administration still lags well behind Obama’s first term numbers on deportations.
5) The “Trump administration wants to deny kids toothpaste and soap” narrative is fake news, another manufactured controversy courtesy of the MSM and Democrats. No one is depriving them.
6) In the media’s reporting of Bass’s comments and O’Rourke’s, not a single one of them have added the “without evidence” qualifier that they typically do with unverifiable claims coming from the Trump administration. Why?
7) The truth of the matter is that a staggering number of unaccompanied minors are attempting to cross the border. There are not enough boots on the ground in the detention centers to give each minor individual attention. Of course, they are not just going to be allowed to coast through the border without immigration officials trying to find an adult who can accompany them (if not a family member).
These stats highlight just why it’s so crucial for the left to work with the right on alleviating the problems at the border rather than demagoguing the issue of funding for humanitarian aid and the wall. Unfortunately, all too many Democrats are more interested in playing politics and making outrageous, unsubstantiated accusations rather than meet in the middle.
People who point out the conditions at the border existed well before Trump are frequently accused by Democrats of “whataboutism,” but it’s not true, and completely misses the point. The point is not made to dismiss the issue, but instead to put things in perspective. What people who bring up the pre-Trump years are saying is that hey, this is a longtime problem. Quit sensationalizing this issue for political gain. We need to put some reforms and other solutions in place to alleviate these problems because they are going to get worse if we do nothing.
If we had a mainstream media that was consistent and not biased, they’d demand to know from Democrats why they have deliberately withheld funding that would help children at the border. They’d also ask why Democrats denied there was an urgent situation at the border until recently. They even wouldn’t pretend this issue magically started under Trump.
But our media, too, is complicit in the setting of many false narratives about the border situation. Conditions will continue to deteriorate, and illegal immigrants will continue to suffer and die until journalists start reporting the truth and putting things in context instead of parroting left-wing talking points because “Orange Man Bad.”
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
The commissars spewing propaganda for the party hacks to repeat.
They might as well publish the New Pravda. Or hang portraits of Baghdad Bob.
I call it PravdAmerika. And they already have portraits of Che Guevara. Useful idiots, indeed.
IF it’s CNN it’s propaganda, Faked, even the photos…..
Broadcast 24/7 on the Comical Narrative Network.
Trump is responsible for that father-daughter drowning? How?
It is exactly because the chance of getting deported is so small that attracts would-be illegal immigrants to take sometimes desperate chances to get here. If the border were truly closed, and all would-be migrants knew this, and if the few who still got through were deported, then such things would not happen.
The way to prevent such things is to remove the incentives to take such desperate measures. But apparently one can’t expect Beto O’Rourke to realize this, as it’s so much easier to emote about the death scene than to contemplate what measures might actucally prevent such deaths.
“Trump is responsible for that father-daughter drowning? How?”
While looking for a lost golf ball, Trump came across the two and drowned them – but not before raping both of them. Then stealing the father’s wallet. Or something like that. Just ask crazy nancy pelosi.
Btw, has anybody seen the photo of the two of them getting out of the water, wearing diving masks?
No need to separate families …. send them ALL BACK TOGETHER! I want to see “Operation Wetback II”. It worked for Eisenhower …. but back then, we didn’t have obstructionist dems who wanted to tear down America.
@walls: Back then, the Dems were interested in keeping American wages high and keeping the support of labor unions. They could not turn away from large numbers of people depressing wages.
Calm yourself. Tone down the ethnic slurs.
That’s not a slur. It’s the fact of the name of Eisenhower’s plan.
Don’t be coy. It’s a slur. It was a slur back then, and a slur now.
Slur or not, that was the name of the operation.
And it gives him license to use an ethnic slur. We see anti-Semetics use this same tactic. And then they pretend to be shocked or too obtuse to gronk what they just did. And here you’ve dug your heels in on this tiny little mole hill because you’ve decided that this is the hill to die on. Because free speech or history matters or some such thing.
Pathetic.
So tiki, are you next going to demand that we all call you Xhe and xher, or is it ze and zir? I guess since Xhou’re the new Language Cop, we all better be careful.
wetback (n.)
“illegal Mexican immigrant to the U.S.,” c. 1924, from wet (adj.) + back (n.); from notion of wading the Rio Grande.
Diversity or color judgment is racist. The term in question was not generally applicable and therefore does not qualify as diverse. For example, the concepts and labels “white privilege” is diverse, “Jew privilege” is diverse, “toxic masculinity” is diverse, etc.
Mexico was in favour of Operation Wetback because it wanted its workers returned.
Workers, citizens. Today, there has been catastrophic progress of diversity, anti-nativism, and civil rights violations under the color of social justice, forcing casualties and collateral damage at both ends of the bridge and throughout. #HateLovesAbortion
Operation Wetback
This was typical from 2015:
‘The Corridor of Death’: Along America’s Second Border
https://time.com/3898564/immigration-border-mexico/
Search for “Obama” in that story and see how much blame he got for piles of dead bodies found in Texas.
Oh that’s right – Obama was mentioned a grand total of zero (0) times.
Journolists are notoriously Pro-Choice.
Certain people are deliberately trying to overwhelm our immigration system with these caravans from Central America. It is incumbent on the DoJ to find out who, arrest them, and throw the lawbook at them over human trafficking.
I can’t see why the Democrats are not on board with this. Since, they tell us, America is irredeemably racist and these migrants will definitely be on the bottom of the social heap, exploited as cheap labor, they really ought to be out to stop this traffic, too.
They are not “on board” because these are the optics they want. They ignored all these things during the Obama admin, dead bodies in the desert, kids in cages, because they don’t care about these people beyond whatever propaganda value they have for the purposes of getting their filthy rotten asses back in power.
I believe it was your side that for decades has said this wasn’t a crisis. Now all the sudden you want to blame Trump. in 1986,90,06 13, and 18 you could have fixed this but it was a political gold mine at the time.
Another “Choice” that needs to be repented and remedied.
NPR, NYT’s and CNN justify publishing images of the dead when circumstances fit their political narrative.
I’ve not the time to pore over all of the articles they’ve posted regarding death images, but I get the feeling it’s always political and rarely justified.
Obama never released images of bin Laden and the the press really didn’t complain, or only slightly complained, didn’t they? But Obama allowed photography of US troop coffins because it made death of fellow Americans “real.”
And now Beta O’Rourke et. al. is trafficking in death images like Pokemon trading cards? And that’s okay? I don’t think it’s okay. I think it’s crass and inhumane.
We’re looking forward to a photo of ny slimes publisher A.G. Sulzberger laying face down in his pool.
First, are the photos legit? Location? Data/time. Sorry I am suspect about it. It is classic liberal media to manufacture things to be different than they were. Remember the cage photos claimed to be trump but they were Obama’s?
I’ve no doubt people drown swimming the Rio Grande. People drown in their own swimming pools. And I also know media manipulate images and context. They also censor or embargo images.
But here’s what bothers me. Media and twitter users are using the image in a culture war “cannon fodder” manner. The image of the valiant, but fallen, unknown soldier. Truly.
One user states “it’s tempting to look away,” imbueing the unknown with a jingoistic progressive virtue.
I want to add to my comment. Using the image of the “fallen unknown” in a culture war “cannon fodder” context is troubling in a number of philosophical and ethical ways; it ignores both the Geneva Convention and the Red Cross’ title 13 proscriptions. Yeah, the GC applies only to wars and war zones. At least that’s what a lawyer may say. But, as we know, put two lawyers in a room and they suddenly don’t all agree. Whatever. It’s not ethical until the next of kin are notified. That’s the standard set by the press and government agencies long before Trump found himself president.
The Red Cross title 13 stuff is supposed to cover those things not covered by the GC.
I’ve more thoughts on this, but no time to type them out.
CNN: “The photo is a haunting, vivid reminder of the danger many face when they try to cross into the United States.”
Me: “No. The photo is a reminder of how Democrats are destroying the system of Lawful and Orderly entry that has served millions of legal immigrants.”
Emigration reform to mitigate the progress of immigration reform at both ends of the bridge and throughout. Trump took a step in the right direction. And now Mexico has found common cause to reduce the incentives for human trafficking, sexual exploitation of women, waterboarding children (a la social justice intervention along the Mediterranean), and the people left behind. Oh, and planned parenthood loses viability, as people start to notice a dearth of persons, without population replacement. Baby steps.
The Democrats refuse to fund the wall which is necessary for border security and they refuse to fund what is needed to deal with the humanitarian crisis they have created. This debacle is entirely the responsibility of the Democrats.
They will show this picture but they won’t show pictures from 9/11.
P R O J E C T I O N is a dem mainstay
I blame the following people for these deaths:
1) The father, for choosing poorly.
2) Immigration activists.
3) Congress.
It’s actually the fault of the swamp/leftists who paid to import them.
Wayfair workers couldn’t stomach they were making beds to cage children.
They asked the company to stop. CEO said no.
Tomorrow, they‘re walking out.
This is what solidarity looks like – a reminder that everyday people have real power, as long as we’re brave enough to use it. https://t.co/667abeLDTG
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 25, 2019
h/t ace.mu.nu
Democrats withhold resources to remedy the crisis they encouraged at the border. They want to abort the child and tax her, too.
Don’t worry: mitch mcconnell is going on a stump across the country to rally the base.
In our dreams. Well, in our dreams, the lox would drop dead, and we’d replace him with someone who would do the work we elcted him to do.
Not since the children were waterboard following Obama’s social justice adventure in Libya…
It’s unconscionable that Democrats encouraged immigration reform, then deny resources to resolve the crises they exploit for political leverage. AOC is acting like a mobster while harassing businesses who are willing to contribute to Trump’s effort to reduce the casualties and collateral damage fostered by her and like-minded. The anti-nativism has been progressive, the diversity appalling, the violation of civil rights and human lives impossible to reconcile. Social justice anywhere is injustice everywhere. Fortunately, Mexico has decided to join our effort to curb the progress of immigration reform and its victims. And, perhaps, pursue emigration reform that will help people at both ends of the bridge and throughout.
Democrats Blame Trump for Border Deaths, Accuse Administration of Deliberately “Punishing” Kids to Make a Point…….
Well wasn’t it one of your demagogues that said never let a tragedy go to waste