Bad to worse
Jesus. My Twitter feed is filled to the rafters with grim news about the state-orphaned children including infants. That’s the algorithm because I was paying a lot of attention to it yesterday, but still, there’s so much of it. And it’s so god damn grim. The tent city being prepared on the Texas border where it’s going to be 106 F. today for instance.
NBC is reporting that the feds’ new desert tent city outside of Tornillo, Texas, is preparing for more than 4,000 children. 20 to a tent. Expected high in Tornillo tomorrow: 106 degrees.
— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) June 20, 2018
I saw the clip of Corey Lewandowski jeering yesterday but I put off posting it.
As the country’s blood pressure continues to rise over the separation of migrant children from their parents at the border, tempers flared Tuesday night on Fox News.
On the cable news giant’s evening newscast, former senior Democratic National Committee adviser Zac Petkanas began relating an anecdote of a “10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was taken from her mother and put in a cage.”
In the middle of his comments, fellow guest Corey Lewandowski cut in.
“Womp womp,” President Trump’s former campaign manager said, making a dismissive trombone-like sound effect.
To me it sounds more like “wa wa” aka “waah waah” which is akin to “boo hoo” rather than a trombone, but everyone’s calling it womp womp so whatever.
“Did you just say ‘womp womp’ to a 10-year-old with Down syndrome?” Petkanas shot back.
“How dare you,” he repeated as Lewandowski attempted to speak. “How dare you. How dare you. How absolutely dare you, sir.”
How he dares is by being a Trumpian. This is who they are.
Lewandowski’s appearance immediately went viral. CNN’s Brian Stelter called the words “dismissive, despicable” in his nightly newsletter, Reliable Sources.
“There is no low to which this coward Corey Lewandowski won’t sink,” former Fox News star Megyn Kelly tweeted. “This man should not be afforded a national platform to spew his hate.”
And yet such national platforms exist and flourish.
Owning the libs by hurting babies. I don't want to be outraged every minute, but anyone who doesn't see this as an emergency seems crazy to me.
— Emily Nussbaum (@emilynussbaum) June 20, 2018
Trump, Kelley, Miller, Sessions and Nielsen are monsters. How eagerly and proudly they abuse innocent children and desperate families for political gain is abominable. Their actions are totally unforgivable.
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) June 20, 2018
It's unconscionable that the US govt is housing babies & toddlers alone in an institutional setting. This crisis was willfully & purposefully created by @realDonaldTrump. It can & should be ended by the same mechanism.
With the simple flick of a pen, this can be ended.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) June 20, 2018
Tonight we learned there are baby internment camps. Baby internment camps.
GODDAMN BABY INTERNMENT CAMPS!— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) June 20, 2018
Trump and his minions, meanwhile, continue to say that this will only be fixed when the Democrats agree to let a bill through that addresses ALL of the Republican’s concerns–including the money for the Wall, the end of catch and release (the prior policy that allowed parents to stay, often with tracking devices, awaiting their hearings), and, of course, tightening the asylum and immigration rules so that if you ain’t white or rich, you better be a saint with a tech degree.
There’s a word for children, held in captivity and traumatized, until some third party gives the individual doing what the person doing the taking wants. It’s ‘hostage’.
These people are nothing less than terrorists.
Yeah, me too. We don’t seem to have that option any more. Of course, we could choose not to be outraged every minute, but only at the expense of being compassionate and humane.
I often tell my husband that I wish I could go back to the time when I never thought about Trump (except when my sister would point out to me how I would never be able to get a job with Trump because I violated some hiring policy he had talked about on The Apprentice. My go to answer was to shrug and yawn and point out that I had no desire to get a job with Trump, I was perfectly happy with my job teaching science to college freshmen). At this point, it is impossible to ever thrust Trump back into obscurity because the crap he has done will haunt our country at least through the remainder of my lifetime, and probably through the lifetime of my grandchildren (if I ever have any, and I’d rather not).
Lewandowski made a “sad trombone” sound, no? It’s a trope. I’d probably transcribe it as you did, using “wah” rather than “womp”.
I guess, but there’s also a sad trombone trope that’s used differently – like, Lily on Modern Family when some performance of Cam’s doesn’t work. Plus “womp” actually sounds like womp as opposed to wah. In short, I’m confused about it.
Arrgghh I know, I fume about that regularly. Of all the people in the WORLD to be forced to think about in perpetuity.
Yeah, the womp womp thing confused me at first because I saw it written down before I saw the video but apparently it’s a common way of writing the sound.
My husband and I were watching Rachel Maddow last night when she broke down and I knew it was going to be bad, but hell’s bells. Baby concentration camps. One of the reporters on his show described babies in cages, left to their own devices. Words fail me.
People used to ask how a civilized, modern country like Weimar Germany could descend into such horror. It baffled me as a young person that people would stand for such awful things as the Nazi’s were doing. The answer is unfolding before our eyes.
I’m still not sure what exactly the answer is, unfortunately.