Disguised as a cocktail waitress, our reporter was on the spot again, this time at a gathering of the Republican brain trust to map out a strategy for increasing their numbers in the House and Senate. Here is her verbatim account as recorded on her secret iPhone:
Pence: Thank you all for coming. The President sends his regrets and best wishes. He is busy preparing his speech for acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. The purpose of this meeting, as you know, is to map out a strategy to destroy the Democrats in the November elections. Also, as you know, the President is enjoying unsurpassed popularity among Republicans, he’s now buddy-buddy with Kim Jon Un, the economy is booming, the findings of the inspector general’s report show that the Russians worked hand-in-hand with Democrats to defeat Trump, and that Comey should be jailed. So should Hilary. Mueller too. It is a great day for us. We in the Party of Trump will dominate the country for decades to come. But we need a unifying theme, and the President and I think it should be, “We are the party of the family.”
Paul Ryan: Great idea! Everyone knows the Democrats hate families.
Mitch McConnell: I’m on board. Anything the President wants.
Rudy Giuliani: Could we pause for a moment to give thanks to the President for all he does and for his love and respect for the family?
Moment of Silence
Pence: Thank you for that. I beg the President’s forgiveness for not suggesting this myself. Before we lay out our family-first strategy, however, we have to address the over capacity problem we have with regard to all the children we have taken away from their no-good, law breaking, illegal immigrant mothers. We have got four or five kids, many of them infants and toddlers, in rooms designed for two. The detention centers are bursting at the seams. There is not enough staff to begin to take care of them all.
Ryan: Detention centers? I am not aware of any detention centers.
McConnell. Me either. Could we get back to the question of how we love families?
Giuliani: Well, we believe in pro life. We are anti abortion, and we believe birth control should be illegal. The Communist-inspired notion that family planning should be covered under Obama Care is outrageous and anti family. That will pick up a lot of votes. Furthermore we believe in slashing benefits to deadbeat moms who don’t work full time and in cutting all federal funding from childcare centers. Our goal is to make families independent and self-reliant. If that is not pro family, I do not know what is.
Pence cell phone rings.
Pence: Excuse me, this is from the President. Yes, Exalted One, I understand. I am going to address the issue of overcrowding right now. In fact I have already started the discussion. How many more prisons, I mean centers? Yes, Exalted One, brilliant.
Pence puts phone back in his pocket.
The President informs me that the number of detained children is now approaching 3,000, and we must expand capacity immediately. He believes we need at least 10,000 beds and suggests that we put this out to bid to the private prison industry. It would be a terrific opportunity for them because we could end up keeping these kids locked up for life. If we put them out on the street, all they would do would rape, murder and steal when they got older. Some could turn out to be terrorists.
Giuliani: Now that is what I call pro family.
Pence: So that settles it. Our big theme will be pro family and how we want to strengthen families by getting rid of all government benefits like Medicaid, TANF, child care subsidies, and minimum wage requirements. We are going to liberate them from the tyranny of government and make them stronger and happier.
Ryan: Fabulous! What I have been working for my entire career. And the savings will enable us to push though real tax reform.
McConnell: Agreed. But do you think that taking toddlers and infants from their mothers might raise a few eyebrows?
Ryan: What toddlers and children?
Giuliani: Fake news. Democrats spreading lies.
Ryan: As I said, I don’t know anything about detention centers. We are the party of the family. But it is also important to keep the law. We are a nation of laws.
Pence: Good. I will get the ad people on it right now. “The Party of Trump is the party of the family.” Love it. It will bring us victory in 2018.
Pence phone rings again.
Pence: What is that Mister President? Make it 100,000 beds? Time to go after DACAs and all the other illegals? Got it. RFP for the private prison industry goes out tomorrow.
Great meeting everyone.
Joe,
We do indeed have a humanitarian crisis that is the result of the incompetence and/or evil of the leaders of some Latin American failed states. This crisis is affecting our country via our porous southern border. That children are forceably separated from their parent(s) is always tragic, whether it is children from El Salvador or Washington, D.C. When parents are incarcerated, their children are placed in some alternative care, be it foster care or “detention centers”. I am not privy to the conditions in these centers, but I would hazard a guess that while not ideal, they are a lot safer and more secure than those of their native country from which they fled with their parents, and probably better than some domestic foster care.
So we return to that age old inconvenient question. What is the alternative? Between the two ludicrous extremes of (1) a border wall and (2) unobstructed immigration through our southern border must lie, not a good answer, but at least a least worse answer. We have faced this before, with Haitians and with the Cubans of the Mariel boat lift, many of whom turned out to be the dregs of Cuban society, as in criminals and the criminally insane, including rapists, pedophiles and other such undesirables and undeserving. At least that is my recollection.
So there must be a “how to” left over from those crises. For now, I’d like to see the left’s outrage and righteous indignation focused more on the governments of the failed states that are at the heart of the problem and less on our own government which, for all its faults, is dealing with a situation which is flush with losers and with no simple solutions or winners that I can appreciate. But, alas, I don’t expect such. None other than HRC has now weighed in with her own outrage. Politics.
The wise and thoughtful comments of militant moderate , Dr. Killebrew, are always appreciated. Yes, the issue is complicated and there is no easy answer. That does not diminish the horror of reading about the cries of toddlers locked up in cages. This is unconciably cruel and beyond the pale. In marks yet another chapter in the unfolding nightmare of the Trump Era.
Joe this is great. It’s new ground. How you manage to find laughter in this most serious of subjects without diminishing the reality and the gravity of what is facing us, looming over us and dragging us down, I’ll never know but you do,
please keep on