Jacob Heilbrunn

How splitting up families gave Trump the biggest crisis of his presidency

For the Democrats, the mounting furore over forcibly separating children from their parents at the border offers a golden opportunity before the midterm elections to tar Donald Trump as a heartless autocrat, a modern-day Baron Bomburst ruling over Vulgaria with his very own Child Catcher. Do a Caratacus Potts and Truly Scrumptious lurk in the wings to liberate the imprisoned children? Or will Trump continue to lock ‘em up?

Both Republicans and Democrats are protesting the policy. Family values has been at the core of the GOP, particularly for its evangelical wing. This represents a repudiation of it.

Franklin Graham thus denounced Trump’s move on the Christian Broadcasting Network as “disgraceful.” Others agree. Laura Bush wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post yesterday declaring that Trump’s family separation policy “breaks my heart.” For good measure, she likened the measures implemented by Trump’s henchwoman Kirsten Nielsen, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, to the infamous camps that Japanese-Americans were incarcerated in by the War Department during World War II.

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