The world is well aware by now of the profanity that the president is credibly alleged to have used last Thursday during a White House meeting in reference to countries including El Salvador, Haiti, and some African nations.
The meeting in which Trump offered that obscenity was over the fate of those currently protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA program. The DACA program is meant to protect undocumented immigrants brought here as children from the threat of deportation, something that, of course, clashes with the president’s fierce anti-immigrant positions.
In that light, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced last year that the administration would be ending the DACA program.
Concurrent to the question of the fate of those protected by DACA, the government also has to answer the question of how it’s going to stay open past Friday night. Immigration policy negotiations have been wrapped up in overall government spending negotiations.
How then did last Thursday’s White House meeting addressing this important issue descend into such chaos?
The Washington Post has some answers.
According to the publication, early in the morning, Trump expressed support for the immigration policy plan that was the main focus of last Thursday’s meeting and had been produced by Republican U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham and Democratic U.S. Senator Richard Durbin. He invited them over to the White House to present it to him, but in between Trump getting on the phone to offer his support and the Senators actually making it to the White House, his opinion on the matter drastically changed.
It was his sometimes controversial Chief of Staff John Kelly who reportedly helped lead the charge to change the president’s mind on the matter. Sources speaking to The Post revealed that Kelly “talked to Trump to tell him that the proposal would probably not be good for his agenda” and that he should not be on board with the Senators who would at the time soon be at the White House.
Kelly was joined in his efforts by controversial Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who reportedly “feared that Graham and Durbin would try to trick Trump into signing a bill that was damaging to him and would hurt him with his political base.”
According to The Post, then, it’s concerns about the opinions of his base that led Trump to rejecting the DACA deal presented to him last Thursday.
Unsurprisingly, however, Trump has blamed Democrats for the stalemate that, unless broken, will lead to the government shutting down at the end of this week.
As recently as Tuesday morning, Trump posted a message to that effect on Twitter.
In the same rant, Trump claimed yet again that we need a wall in between the U.S. and Mexico, even though there is no real world justification for such a massive undertaking.
Trump sticks to the line that we need a wall in between us and Mexico, and yet, he still finds it in himself to blame Democrats for the immigration policy stalemate and impending government shutdown — Sad!
Kelly has found himself at the center of controversy in the past, having served as the Trump administration’s attack dog against a Congresswoman after she criticized the president for his behavior on a phone call with the widow of a fallen American serviceman.
Featured Image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
