Trump and his administration thought that he could deport kids with cancer and no one would notice, but Rachel Maddow shined a national spotlight on his heinous policy.
Video:
The Trump administration is so arrogant that they didn't even try to come up with a cover story for why they are deporting sick kids. https://t.co/H4DmaIvTr6 #Maddow pic.twitter.com/EWdS7UCWm3
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) August 29, 2019
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Maddow said:
Just take a step back from this for a second. We’re going to talk to a lawyer in the middle of the fight. Trying to represent some of the families and keep some of these kids alive. Take a step back for a second. Imagine being in charge of the federal government, of the richest and most powerful nation on Earth and deciding what that government ought to work on is figuring out, where are all the really good pediatric hospitals in this country and trying to figure out if there might be kids in the hospitals who are currently receiving ongoing treatment that is saving their lives so you could somehow figure out a way to force a stop to that treatment and kick those kids and their families out of this country so that they can no longer get the care keeping them alive. Kids with cystic fibrosis, kids with cancer, kids with rare diseases. Imagine being in charge of the U.S. Federal government and choosing to use it for that purpose. To target the power of the U.S. Government at children with cancer.
Then imagine that once you have decided to do this, you what, hoped nobody would care or nobody would notice because it’s just immigrants? You are not planning on announcing it. So, therefore, you figure you are never going to have to answer for it. You come up with no plan for how to explain this. When local officials, local reporters, local news outlets, local advocacy organizations ask questions about what you are doing in the name of the American people. Having come up with no way to explain this, your makeshift response is to say it’s no big deal. Some other agency will take care of it. We’re not doing this anymore. But we’re sure somebody else is. It sounds terrible when you say we will send kids with cancer to their deaths. We’re sure somebody else is taking care of it. Some other agency. You guys — they’re doing it.
The Trump administration has no idea what it is doing. Or how to handle the inevitable reaction to this from the American people. They have no idea what they are doing here except for the fact that they have decided to tell parents that they must withhold life-saving ongoing medical treatment from their seriously ill kids on orders from the U.S. Government so they can get out of this country because president trump wants them out. Imagine being a U.S. Official who has been doing that kind of work. Now imagine being the parent of a sick kid who is holding on to a letter sent to you by those U.S. Officials and realizing this is what you are up against and this is the exact way your child’s life is being put at in the very short term over the next 30 days by this president. By this president. By this administration and the people who work for him and their priorities. Imagine.
The truly vile part of this policy is that deporting sick kids with cancer is how the Trump administration decided to use the vast power of the federal government. These are choices that Donald Trump and his administration are intentionally making. It isn’t the first time that the administration has chosen this path. This is the same administration that has ripped migrant children away from their parents and placed them in cages. The same White House had to be sued so that the kids were given toothpaste and sleep.
Cruelty isn’t a bug of the Trump administration. It’s a feature, and the White House is so arrogant that they didn’t bother to come up with a plan to explain why they were sending sick kids to their deaths. They thought that you wouldn’t notice or care, but Rachel Maddow noticed, and that’s why Trump should never be ignored because this administration wants to operate in the darkness because the light of truth is what will lead to their decline.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
