Discussion: Melania Trump Makes Surprise Visit To US-Mexico Border

I don’t think she’s doing it to give him cover. This is all about her post-White House future. She doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life getting her food spit in at every restaurant she goes to. What’s the point marrying a rich, old monster if you can’t enjoy shopping and dining out on your divorce settlement?

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Photo op.

It will be interesting to see how she plays it …. and which speech she will plagiarize if she does open her mouth.

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Confirm through birth certificates? From what I understand everything they bring with them, including underwear is confiscated. But there are birth certificates?

Plus, many of the poorest had home births and there is no recorded birth because they couldn’t afford it.

FFS.

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The morale of the DHS staff had been lagging, she wants to lift it ?

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Fuck this bullshit publicity stunt. Fuck it.

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I hope she brought paper towels like Donald did in Puerto Rico. Imprisoned kids just looooove rolls of paper towels! They can put their arms around them and pretend they have their parents back again.

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From NYTimes, op-ed by Charles Blow today:

You just can’t construct prisons for babies. You can’t rip children from mothers and fathers. You can’t use the power of the American government to institute and oversee a program of state-sponsored child abuse. You can’t have a system where the process and possibility of reunification is murky and maybe futile.You can’t do any of that and assume that decent people won’t rise up in revolt.Donald Trump learned that this week as an avalanche of indignation came down on him and his administration for his brutal, inhumane “zero tolerance” policy at the border, which was resulting in the terrible suffering of children and their parents.Citizens were outraged. Politicians were outraged. Corporate leaders were outraged. Foreign leaders were outraged. The pope was outraged.This is an immoral act of an immoral man, one who saw absolutely no flaw in
using the anguish of children and families — people he viewed as deficient and less-than, “not their best” — as pawns in a political fight to force Congress to fund his ridiculous hate symbol: a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.He clearly didn’t even think that this was a losing battle for him. He thought using border agents to abduct these children was a winning idea.On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported: “President Donald Trump sees his hard-line immigration stance as a winning issue heading into a midterm election he views as a referendum on his protectionist policies.”A Republican member of Congress told CNN that Trump said on Tuesday during a closed-door meeting that “the crying babies doesn’t look good politically.”Indeed, a CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released Monday found although two-thirds of Americans overall opposed the policy, a majority of Republicans supported it.Think about that for a second. That to me goes beyond standard political tribalism. That ventures into the territory that the Tennessee Republican senator Bob Corker described last week: This is cultlike.Trump’s grip on the throat of the Republican Party is so strong that it no longer has breath or voice for objection.As goes Trump, so goes it. Not even the sight of devastated families could move the party that once called itself the party of family values. Not even the idea of “tender age” internment camps for babies could move the party built on the protection of “unborn babies.”The contradiction is abominable.
It’s not that Trump and his family don’t understand the downside of imposing even the smallest amount of stress on children. It’s just that they value different children in differing degrees.Melania Trump clearly thought that it was too traumatic to move the couple’s young son to Washington during the school year, so she stayed with him in New York, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars for security.As Ms. Trump told Us Weekly in January 2016 about talking to the couple’s son about potentially moving to Washington: “At that age, it’s hard to explain to them. … I tell him: Take it day by day, enjoy your life, live your meaningful life as I like to do. … Of course, at that age, every child would worry, especially if they love school, if they love friends; they don’t want to lose that. Everything is a new opportunity and it brings new friends and a new school. You never know, you never know what happens. Enjoy it day by day, live your life and don’t stress yourself.”No, please don’t stress yourself. Stress is for poor people, like immigrants.Even though, as The New York Times reported, sparing their son from the stress of changing schools and moving from a luxury Manhattan apartment to one of the most famous and important residences in the world cost the New York Police Department an estimated $127,000 to $146,000 a day “to protect the first lady and her son while they reside in Trump Tower. Melania Trump didn’t move to the White House until last June.In May 2017 Reuters reported:“A federal spending agreement reached late on Sunday will reimburse New York City for money spent securing U.S. President Donald Trump and his family at Trump Tower in Manhattan.” Yes, she made an unusual step in publicly condemning the family separation policy, but she did so using her husband’s false “both sides of the aisle” talking point. That was a lie. The president alone started this and had the power to end it.Then she tweeted this tone-deaf, Marie Antoinette-ish statement, as her husband was still separating children from their parents and sending them to internment camps:“A great visit with the King & Queen of Spain at the @WhiteHouse today. Queen Letizia & I enjoyed tea & time together focusing on the ways we can positively impact children.”Enjoyed tea? Positively impact children? I just can’t.Now some people are reporting that she quietly pressured her husband behind the scenes to reverse the policy.Is she or her husband going to visit the child internment camps he created, to see what they wrought and console the crying children there? Is either going to work tirelessly for the swift reunification of every single family that has been torn apart? Will either publicly apologize to the families who were damaged? Until then, I give her no laurels. Donald and Melania are a team in this terror. They have worked together to make the abhorrent normal. They deserve each other; we deserve better.

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I was just about to post this exchange. It REALLY pissed me off.

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Has Michelle given a speech or an interview on this topic in the last few days? If not, Melania may have to wait to give her speech…

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Up next: photo-op for Faux News showing her with some children in what looks suspiciously like posing to resemble a photo of Mother Theresa with her flock…

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Word.

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Exactly…and this is verification for a PHONE CALL???

Heck, they should be able to talk to anyone they know on the freaking phone.

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Melania Trump, feckless conspirator.

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Melania really doesn’t understand why everyone is complaining, This is the daycare Ivanka promised during the election. The parents should be happy with the service while they straighten out their legal problems.

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Thank goodness for Charles Blow.

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Of course. It’s all theater. Kinda disappointed that Melania’s old prostitute ways came back at this moment. She is going there to give those concentration camps a clean bill, just to please Trump and protect Barron’s inheritance. Once a who’re always a whore.

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Now they are saying that the bad weather down there may prevent Melania from going to one of the actual, “rougher” intake centers. Too bad - and funny that the kids and parents aren’t exempt from the cruel treatment Trump and Sessions mandated if it’s raining or 105 degrees.

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Hilarious!

On a more serious note: I guess she isn’t deterred by all the omniscient comments one sees about her motives (and her breasts).

Good for her.

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Is it possible she is trying to find Barron ?

I pray that this is not being done for a photo -op or to distract from the horror her husband has caused, or the child abuse and trauma he has caused. If so, I say deport her asap.
If not, I give her some credit for at least making an effort to see what damage her husband has inflicted on non- white asylum seekers and their children. And , hopefully,she is there to make it clear that the No Tolerance policy makes her husband look weak. That she , as First Lady, has No Tolerance for Government Sponsored Child ( and family ) Abuse.

If you are a lawyer or a doctor or engineer, or some other kind of professional, you enter into a situation with specific questions. For starters, there are a few like “What happened to the babies? The little girls? Can I talk to these locked up people?”

The other thing is that artificially-created crises require a narrative framing. The Miller-Hannity M-13 shithole country vermin infestation invader framing was pretty bad, and Melania’s job here seems to be to find something to replace it beyond “Hey, now we’re compassionate and locking up and tazing the entire family!” One idea would be to add Silicon Valley (guys, don’t even try with the Silicone Valley jokes) to her whirlwind tour. She could discuss automation, AI and robotic impacts on future labor needs of the US. It could be that they should be considering alternatives if they are also going to be competing with machines like the rest of us. That’s a human crisis as well.

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