"We must also have heart and compassion for unemployed, struggling and
forgotten Americans," Trump said Tuesday after Jeff Sessions announced DACA
would be rescinded. (photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty)
Don't Be Surprised if Trump's Assault on 'Dreamers' Works - Politically
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
06 September 17
The president is behaving like a candidate again, which is bad news for his
political opponents
ere is an unpopular observation about Donald Trump's latest assault on
immigrants: It might work, politically.
Delivering the odious message through his feckless, oft-humiliated Justice
Department subordinate, Jeff Sessions, Trump this week announced that the
Department of Homeland Security would stop processing applications under the
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.
Begun under Barack Obama's administration in 2012, DACA allowed undocumented
immigrants who entered the country as minors to receive work permits and
renewable exemptions from deportation.
Sessions delivered the news with anxious excitement, like he was finally
getting to the fun part of being the designated organ grinder's monkey of
the Trump administration. He insisted that he was only righting a wrong,
undoing an executive branch dictum that Obama had forced down the throats of
Congress years before.
"Such an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws," Sessions said, "was
an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the executive branch."
Sessions was just warming up. The bulk of his argument against DACA was
phrased with an unmistakable nod to the kind of nationalist, identitarian
rhetoric you'd expect to hear from someone like Steve Bannon.
"We have inherited from our founders, and have advanced, an unsurpassed
legal heritage," Sessions said. "[This] is the foundation of our freedom,
our safety and our prosperity."
The idea of anyone from Alabama bragging about his unsurpassable "legal
heritage" sounds like a joke, but it's not - there's not a lot of irony to
go around in American politics these days.
In a statement issued after Sessions', Trump himself doubled down on the
Bannonite themes. He promised to "resolve the DACA issue with heart and
compassion," but added that compassion isn't just for penniless children
fleeing violence and corruption in foreign countries.
"We must also have heart and compassion for unemployed, struggling and
forgotten Americans," Trump explained.
Trump announced a plan to continue renewing permits for anyone whose status
expires in the next six months, then saddled Congress with the mess, giving
them a March 5th, 2018, deadline to preserve or kill DACA.
The press, a parade of celebrities and a significant portion of our national
elected officials denounced the maneuver as transparent racism and cruelty.
Apple CEO Tim Cook and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg both ripped the
decision. Lena Dunham, Susan Sarandon and George Takei unsurprisingly chimed
in with their own denunciations. Director Rob Reiner put it as follows:
"Unfortunately there is no other way to say this: Donald J. Trump is a
heartless prick."
Democrats, too, lined up one after another to take a whack. The move, said
Elizabeth Warren, was "part of the bigoted policies that are a cornerstone
of [Trump's] administration."
"Cruel. Not America," was Joe Biden's contribution.
Some Republicans rushed to condemn the move, or at least seemed to. Paul
Ryan said he hoped Congress could find a solution so that "those who have
done nothing wrong can still contribute." Sen. Jeff Flake, facing
re-election in Arizona, said that DACA kids "should not be punished for the
sins of their parents." John McCain said in a statement that Trump's move
was the "wrong approach."
It's these Republicans who are being targeted politically with this move.
This just-concluded month of August saw Trump in political freefall,
denounced worldwide for his decision to stand up for the "very fine people"
who, according to him, were included among a crowd of marching neo-Nazis in
Charlottesville.
But September so far shows Trump returning to what has worked for him over
and over in the past two years: Daring establishment Republicans to enter
into policy agreement with the liberal consensus, particularly on
immigration.
Trump won the presidency thanks in significant part to the Republican
Party's misread of its own electorate on that issue heading into 2016.
Essentially, Trump and the Republican leaders were reading the same tea
leaves, but coming to two different conclusions.
While leaders in both parties saw a general trend toward acceptance of
immigrants - in January of 2016, 55 percent of Americans overall said
immigrants strengthen America - Trump courted the recalcitrant half of
Republican voters who continued to decry immigrants as a menace who weakened
the country.
The establishment Republicans saw they couldn't be viable as a national
political party long-term if they continued to maintain an intolerant stance
on immigration.
But Trump, thinking on a more selfish and short-term basis, understood that
he could control the Republican Party in the here and now by running sharply
in the other direction. He wiped out the likes of "low-energy Jeb" and
"little Marco," both party-approved choices with some pro-immigration
leanings, by blasting both as "weak" on the issue.
Ted Cruz, who probably never imagined he'd have to start off running to the
left of anyone on immigration, spent much of the campaign trying to prove he
was just as dickish as Trump on border matters - a tough trick to pull off,
when you're leading off your stump speeches with tales of your immigrant dad
sneaking into Texas with a hundred bucks sewn into his underpants. Ben
Carson found himself promising a campaign of drone-striking border-crossers,
and it still wasn't enough. And so on.
A few weeks ago, Trump looked finished as a politician. He was wrapping his
arms around Nazis in public and then emptying his id for all the world to
see in a pair of remarkable unscripted tirades, first at Trump Tower, and
then in a 77-minute rant in Phoenix.
He is now fighting back, and it's a mistake to be distracted by the
transparent loathsomeness of this DACA maneuver. Trump knows that while this
doesn't play in newsrooms or in Lena Dunham's trailer, it goes over pretty
damn well in other parts of the country.
He also knows that other Republicans are watching what's happening with the
likes of Flake, who is currently getting roasted for opposing Trump on this
and other issues. The Arizona Republican is getting beaten like a gong in
the polls by a more conservative and Trump-aligned primary challenger in Dr.
Kelli Ward.
Flake's numbers are currently so bad that there are some who think he might
consider dropping out before the primary. If such a wipeout were to take
place, it would have a devastating effect on the opposition to Trump
generally.
For all the talk about unseating Trump with impeachment or an Article 25
proceeding, the reality is that Trump will likely have a chance to rack up
some kills of his own first in the midterm elections - even if they come
from his own party. Longtime Trump advisor Roger Stone said as much at the
end of last month:
"Most members of Congress are arrogant, and until a scalp is actually taken
they are going to continue to be defiant," Stone told The Hill.
Though this is not the smartest strategy in the world, it is, at least, a
kind of plan. Trump won the White House by battering the Republican
establishment with an exaggerated, parodized version of its own
irresponsible rhetoric. If he can continue to show he dominates the party
base, even if it's just a thin plurality of voters overall, he can put some
doubt into the minds of any Republicans who are thinking of joining in an
effort to topple his presidency.
Just one particularly gruesome loss by an open Trump antagonist like Flake
or even the suddenly-waffling Bob Corker of Tennessee - who recently
wondered aloud about Trump's "stability" and "competence" - might be enough
to chill out any hint of serious Republican rebellion. Trump just tweeted a
clear, if ungrammatical, 2018-themed warning to Corker: "Tennessee not
happy!"
As historically unpopular as Trump has been as a president, he is still
nowhere near as unpopular as the institutions of the House and Senate
generally. Last month, across five different polling agencies - Gallup, CNN,
CBS News, Monmouth University and Quinnipiac University - public approval of
Congress never exceeded 20 percent. Trump's numbers, hideous as they are,
consistently run about twice as high.
Meanwhile, a major Republican leader like Mitch McConnell was last month
running at about 30 percent approval rating among Republicans, according to
Public Policy Polling. That's compared with 81 percent favorability for
Trump among the same Republican respondents. Trump still has a hammer over
most of the elected hacks in his own party.
For two years now Americans have been bewildered by the train-wreck persona
of Donald Trump, wondering how he could be succeeding despite a seemingly
fierce determination to offend every voting bloc on earth outside of angry
half-literate white dudes.
The answer lay in the fact that the rest of the political landscape is
increasingly fragmented, and other institutions - Congress, the media, the
Republican and Democratic Party establishments - all have ratings that are
nearly as low or lower even than Trump's. This allows the Orange One to
survive seemingly unsurvivable scandals.
Not even Trump can thrive embracing torch-bearing Nazis. But just a slight
retreat from that extreme, pushing Jeff Sessions forward to air out a
watered-down, tie-clad version of the same racialist politics, might be
enough to help Trump reassert control over the same furious anti-immigration
plurality that won him the election.
That giant blob of dumb support might not be enough to help him win
re-election. But it could easily be enough to help him survive all four
years, and that's bad enough.
Watch below: Attorney General Jeff Sessions announces Trump's plans to end
DACA.
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