Anytime Donald Trump is caught in a political scandal, his default stance is to blame all Democrats, President Obama, Hillary Clinton, or the “fake news” media. His latest round of tweet tantrums, however, took that deflection to a whole new level.
Trump’s insistence on blaming Democrats for the horrifying treatment of immigrant children follows a damning report by the ACLU released on Friday. Reports of children, including infants and toddlers, being separated from their mothers, detained in unlivable conditions, beaten, psychologically abused, and even suffering sexual abuse at the hands of those responsible for their detention sparked outrage among Democrats and the public alike.
Rep. Ted Lieu called Trump out for these attempts to deflect from the criticism with a quick, harsh fact check.
Indeed, there is no law written anywhere in U.S. immigration policy that requires children to be separated from their mothers or detained separately from their families. That policy was put into place by Trump’s appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who defended the practice vehemently and without apology earlier in May.
‘If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.’
Not only is Trump using a made-up law to deflect from his own administration’s cruelty, he acts as if he doesn’t have the power as president to set new policy. Democrats have not defended this practice, nor has anyone on the left supported it in any way. Trump has never accepted accountability for this inhumane practice, nor has he stopped pushing his racist rhetoric that paints every undocumented immigrant as a dangerous criminal gang member.
Twitter took Trump to task for his blatant lie. See some of their responses below:
Featured image via Getty/Alex Wong
