For right now I’m calling it the “sad trombone” list. It’s a running mental list of all of those OMG-what-the-?!?! kind of moments the Trump administration and its cast of sympathizers keep providing.
I’ve named it after Trump lackey Corey Lewandowski, prompted by the “womp womp” noise he made on Fox News last week. The program’s other guest, Democratic strategist Zac Petkanas, was relating the story of a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome taken from her mother in Texas after they crossed the U.S. border.
Petkanas had just finished the words “taken from her mother and put in a cage” when Lewandowski piped up with the “womp womp.”
Those two syllables may be the most honest Lewandowski has ever put together in his time representing Trump as his campaign manager, or shilling for Trump as a talking head on cable.
I think that pretty much sums up the Trump administration’s attitude toward people who are immigrants.
Womp womp.
Lewandowski tried to explain himself out of it, saying he was referring to the other guest — the guy concerned about the 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome taken from her mom at the border and put in a cage.
Oh … I see. His womp womp was more about bad timing than bad judgment.
Also on the list is first lady Melania Trump’s decision to wear a green jacket with “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” painted on the back on her way to visit a few of the thousands of immigrant children who have been taken from their parents by the federal government, so the parents can be prosecuted for what is, if it’s a first crossing, a federal misdemeanor.
She had changed clothes by the time she landed, and then toured a detention center for children in Texas.
If I had the chance to ask Melania Trump, or her husband, a question, it wouldn’t be about her wardrobe.
“You’ve now seen the center, and the children. Would you leave your own young son in a detention center like this, without you?”
The White House image makers hoped, of course, that the American people would be swept away by the sight of the smiling first lady visiting children and, seeing the center’s brightly colored painted walls (and apparent lack of chain-link fencing and children huddling under space blankets) would conclude that it’s all better now. Nothing to see here. Move along.
The reality is that these children are among the thousands marooned in detention centers and shelters across the country. They don’t know when, or if, they’ll see their parents again and many are too young to know their own names, or be able to comprehend what is happening to them.
Trump signed an executive order last week, which he said means families should no longer be separated, but that they should be confined and held together – in facilities that have yet to be built or retrofitted. The children already in federal custody, well, no one quite knows yet what will happen to them.
And really, does it matter what Corey Lewandowski says?
Remember back to 2016, when Lewandowski was charged with a misdemeanor for battery after a reporter said he grabbed her and almost pulled her to the floor as she tried to ask Trump a question at a campaign event in Florida.
The battery charge was eventually dropped. But the contrast in circumstances strikes me: Two fathers are arrested, each on a low-level misdemeanor charge. The first father goes about his business, and isn’t detained while his case proceeds and he is given a notice to appear in court. The charges end up being dropped.
But the second father, he is arrested, taken into custody and his children are taken away, put in a detention center and possibly moved across the country without him being told where they’ve gone. He could be deported without them.
I know the situations aren’t the same. But I have to wonder if it has ever occurred to Lewandowski, or anyone who agrees with him, that the U.S. is punishing immigrant children for the actions of their parents — and that parents are being punished before they’re tried and convicted. A misdemeanor offense, and the parents lose their children.
And the children lose their parents.
