"They Made Me Do It!"

Seriously, why hide it?

If you want to see the infection of Donald Trump, read to the end:

“What you’re talking about is an unaccompanied child,” Nielsen opined.

“But, Secretary, I just have a minute left,” Harris interrupted. “You testified that you don’t detain children. The IG report indicates that CBP — I’m not finished — the IG report indicates that CBP has detained children. And not only has CBP detained children, they have detained them for longer than is statutorily allowed.”

“How do you reconcile the IG report with your testimony this morning?” Harris pressed.

“We do not detain children,” Nielsen insisted. “What we do is, when we apprehend them at a border patrol station, we process them. And as soon as there is room in an HHS facility, we transfer them.”

“So does the processing involve detention?” Harris wondered.

“It’s not a detention facility!” Nielsen exclaimed.

“Do they stay in CPB custody? Do they spend the night there?” the California senator tried again, appearing annoyed.

“We are not able to, under the law, put them anywhere else,” Nielsen replied. “So, we will care for them until bed space opens at a detention facility at HHS.”

“In other words, you do detain children,” Harris remarked.

“In other words, we do not have enough detention facilities at HHS because 10,000 children were sent here unaccompanied and their parents chose to do that,” Nielsen insisted.

Government is supposed to do what is required of it, and handle the consequences of performing those functions.  If we are going to have "border control," then we have to have the ability to carry out whatever policies are deemed necessary to that end.  If we are going to respond to natural disasters, we respond to the disaster; we don't whine about the disaster being worse than expected, or that residents didn't evacuate and "chose" to be trapped in the disaster zone.

The detention of 10,000 children (an exaggerated number) is not the result of those children "being sent here unaccompanied and their parents chose to do that," but even if it was, the policy to detain them came from Trump:  not from Congress, not from the Courts, but only from the White House.  That policy is not working out as planned (if there was anything that can even be faintly said to resemble a plan in this policy), so the Administration blames the victims.  No surprise; Trump blames the victims of sexual assault, not the perpetrators of assault.  (One wonders if he'd be as quick to claim the woman a liar who said she was punched in the nose; he's certainly quick enough to denounce the woman who says she was groped.)

The government chose to detain these children, and now the government blames the parents of the children for the government's inability to function as a government; or at least as a government with rules and regulations and laws it is supposed to uphold, that people with responsibility have sworn to uphold (a hollow oath, that).  The government is responsible for the policies it implements, and the way it implements them.  Blaming the victim is a really, really cheap dodge.

It's always the victim's fault with Trump; and with his entire Administration.

The absolute curdling of American "exceptionalism" goes on.  There's nothing exceptional about yahoos screaming at rallies to "Lock her up!"  Especially if they blame "her" when they are found to be responsible for the illegal act of detention.  There is nothing "exceptional" about refusing to take responsibility for your actions.  That is the very opposite of something to take pride in.