During a visit to Calexico, CA last Friday, the utterly clueless president instructed Border Patrol agents to just go out on a limb and shut the border down themselves, barring people from the country despite judge’s orders to, well, not do that.
This surreal, incredibly dumb anecdote comes this afternoon from CNN:
Last Friday, the President visited Calexico, California, where he said, “We’re full, our system’s full, our country’s full — can’t come in! Our country is full, what can you do? We can’t handle any more, our country is full. Can’t come in, I’m sorry. It’s very simple.”
Behind the scenes, two sources told CNN, the President told border agents to not let migrants in. Tell them we don’t have the capacity, he said. If judges give you trouble, say, “Sorry, judge, I can’t do it. We don’t have the room.”
After the President left the room, agents sought further advice from their leaders, who told them they were not giving them that direction and if they did what the President said they would take on personal liability. You have to follow the law, they were told.
This is effectively the same thing Trump reportedly tried to coerce Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen into doing, because he apparently sees immigration laws as suggestions.
Even as I was writing this blog, a federal judge issued an injunction blocking Trump’s policy of holding asylum seekers on the Mexican side of the border:
Trump, Nielsen, nor the rank-and-file border patrol agents the president spoke with can change those laws on a whim, but the current leader of the free world is clearly too dumb to understand that.