Chuck Todd on Separation Policy: Trump ‘Lost Control of an Issue That Was Defined by Television’

‘In the end, President Trump did agree to do what he insisted could not be done’

RUSH EXCERPT:

TODD: "Good Sunday morning. For perhaps the first time in this presidency, Donald Trump lost control of an issue that was defined by television. Not the fact that parents and children were being separated at the border, that was the administration’s policy. What mattered was what happened next. It was the wall-to-wall parade of cable and network TV stories of frightened children and desperate, anguished parents. It was all the living former first ladies and the growing number of Republicans who criticized the policy as “inhumane” and “unworthy of the United States.” It was the sound of administration officials articulating a policy of separating children from their parents, then denying that their policy was to separate children from their parents. In the end, President Trump did agree to do what he insisted could not be done. He signed an executive order ending the policy. But now there are reports of tense infighting at the White House over how to reunite families. And there’s confusion over where and how to house tens of thousands of people. To be fair, this crisis, immigration crisis, which more properly should be called a refugee crisis, predates President Trump and has confounded presidents before him. But with children now in shelters at the border and around the country, this much is clear: the Trump administration has inflamed a humanitarian crisis it has no idea yet how to repair."

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