TRUMP: BORDERING ON GENIUS OR INSANITY?

A CBR post on President Trump's recent signing of the executive order to "keep families together."

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Here's another thing: failing any new revelations, I don't think the GOP obstructed Obama on the matter of immigration. This even-handed essay on his status as "deporter-in-chief" makes it sound like he pretty much did what he wanted on that score. There may well be laws he wanted to pass and couldn't, but my memory is that the GOP was far more concerned with unseating Affordable Care.

Regardless of Obama's legacy, the main point of my cynical post is that people forget a lot of dicey political matters if those matters aren't constantly shoved in their face by the media. I'm saying that now that Trump has signed the executive order, he's put the ball in the court of Congress, and it should go without saying that both sides will be wrangling over their respective agendas. Neither side will be primarily motivated by the suffering of young children, in my opinion. I mention Obama's legacy in part not to claim "both sides are the same," but that there were irregularities during his administration that were simply ignored by the media. I don't endorse Trump's concept of "fake news," but I think it's smart to remain aware of how the media often makes the news to serve an agenda. I used to think FOX News was egregious about its agenda, but Trump's regime has brought out some of the worst in CNN and MSNBC.

I don't know what Trump had in mind in increasing the criminal prosecution of illegals, and neither does anyone else here. I think it's possible that he showboated in order to impress his base, but that seems improbable, since even an egotist like Trump *must* have guessed how extreme the blowback would be. He went through a campaign in which the opposition tried to shame him with the "P**** video," so he knows that the primary anti-Trump weapon in the Left's arsenal is always going to be shame. I entertain the possibility that he knew how the Left would react when he upped the criminalization process, which then increased the already ongoing legal process of separation to the point that it became much more visible, so that not even modern journalists could miss it. Did Trump orchestrate this whole thing in order to get his Border Wall? That might be giving him too much credit, just as the other scenario may give him too little. The truth may be somewhere in between, though it's certainly not anything you're going to see on 24-hour news.