Sunday, October 21, 2018

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

Donald Trump has apparently had enough of this whole "migrant" thing and is now considering sealing and militarizing the southern border totally as WH Chief of Staff John Kelly, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and National Security Adviser John Bolton's Mustache are now fighting it out to see whether or not we start putting goddamn tanks and troops on the Rio Grande.

President Donald Trump's frustration over rising numbers of undocumented immigrants crossing into the U.S. is stoking tensions among his advisers as some White House officials push for a more aggressive policy that includes completely sealing the southern border, said four people familiar with the discussions.

The differences escalated into an angry, profanity-laced exchange on Thursday between White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and national security adviser John Bolton as a Honduran migrant caravan of roughly 4,000 people approached the U.S. border. The dispute was so heated, according to several people, that Kelly ended up storming out of the White House shortly afterward.

Trump’s hard-line stance on immigration, including family separation policies that involved holding children in cages, has been a centerpiece of his presidency and a core message ahead of the midterm elections. But his failure to secure funding for a promised wall along the border with Mexico, coupled with a renewed surge in border crossings, has tested his ability to make good on his promises.

During a meeting Thursday about the issue, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was explaining an 80 percent rise in immigrant families crossing the border when Bolton interrupted her to criticize her handling of the issue, two people familiar with the meeting said.

Bolton said that Nielsen, a close Kelly ally, was doing a poor job with the border and that her department was not producing the needed results, these people said. He argued that she was failing at one of her signature tasks as Homeland Security secretary, they said.

Bolton, as well as Trump's senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, also proposed sending armed guards to the border and denying entry to anyone without proper documentation, including asylum-seekers, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

What began as a policy discussion turned into a harsh exchange between Kelly and Bolton, just steps from the Oval Office, with Kelly telling Bolton that he lacked an understanding of the complexities of immigration policy, and Bolton telling Kelly that his efforts so far have been ineffective, people familiar with the discussion said. The exchange between Bolton and Kelly was first reported by Bloomberg.

According to three people familiar with the exchange, Kelly repeatedly used the f-word to punctuate his points. These people said Kelly, who had served as Trump’s first secretary of Homeland Security, fiercely defended Nielsen, who has come under fire from Trump over her handling of the border.

The advisers then went into the Oval Office to discuss the matter with the president. Kelly ultimately stormed out of the White House early with no resolution on the issue, these people said.

"I’m f---ing out of here," Kelly said, according to one person briefed on the exchange.

I've said multiple times that the one thing Trump won't tolerate as far as his rogues' gallery of staffers and cabinet flunkies is "making the boss look bad to his base".  With border crossings up due to Trump being forced to back off on separating families at the border, it looks like Trump is going to blow a gasket and maybe seal the border completely at some point as a caravan from Honduras approaches.

We'll see.

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