Donald Trump’s political ploy to send U.S. troops to the border to rile up his base ahead of the midterms will face consequences if Democrats take back the House of Representatives next week.
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In an interview with Washington Post opinion writer Greg Sargent, Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said his party won’t let Trump get away with this reckless stunt.
“We would ask the Pentagon to come in and explain to us in an open public hearing what they’re doing and why,” Smith said. “I don’t think we should let the president get away with this type of policy with no justification and no explanation for it.”
Smith added: “It seems like the president is trying to gin up an issue as opposed to addressing a problem. I would like to hear the policy justification.”
There is no policy justification for Trump’s stunt
It’s important to remember that nothing Donald Trump does is based on sound policymaking because this is a president who has no grasp of actual policy details. He simply says and does whatever the crackpot voices in his head tell him to do – consequences be damned.
His stunt to send thousands of troops to the southern border to take on a non-existent caravan of criminals is no different. It’s purely meant to rile up the minority of the country that supports him before the midterms.
As Greg Sargent noted in his piece, “Trump is sending these troops to the border for no purpose other than dramatizing his campaign message that only he and Republicans will protect the country from what he is characterizing as a national emergency.”
“His characterization is simply absurd — these migrants are hundreds of miles from the border, they are dwindling in number, and the caravan is mostly made up of families with children,” Sargent added. “The use of the military as props to sustain that fiction is an extraordinary abuse of the public trust.”
Trump’s stunt isn’t just an insult to the American people, who can see right through it, but it’s an abuse of presidential power to deploy the U.S. military to ratchet up enthusiasm among his base.
Luckily, in less than a week, the Democrats are poised to take control of the United States House of Representatives and serve as a desperately needed check on this out-of-control president.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
